AMA: Barracuda VP, Product Management, Mike Flouton on Influencing the C-Suite

My first principle when it comes to roadmaps is “transparency.” Being transparent about priorities, what’s being prioritized, what’s not being prioritized and WHY makes a massive difference. There are plenty of SaaS solutions that are great for this, but in the old days we used a simple Excel spreadsheet and that’s still good enough today. Define a prioritization framework – pick some high level business objectives you want to achieve – and align clear, objective criteria around them. Score every roadmap item on those criteria, trade off against LOE, and welcome debate. Show why you’re prioritizing what you are And be flexible -you’re going to make mistakes and it’s ok to be corrected. In fact it’s a desired outcome – it’s only going to get stronger the more eyes there are on it.

This is a really interesting question. I guess I’ve never really thought about being stuck in between two stakeholders before. Whether they agree with each other or not is actually mostly irrelevant – the real issue is that there isn’t agreement on the path forward yet and you need to build alignment. And that’s totally fine. Lack of alignment is a normal part of the process and arguably a good thing – diversity of thought and opinion makes for better decisions. So let’s talk more broadly about driving to consensus. Presumably you are bringing a well researched and reasoned proposal to the table. But despite your best efforts, almost certainly haven’t thought about everything and haven’t anticipated all of the complicating factors. Execs have a wealth of experience and pattern recognition they can share with you. Now it’s time to make the proposal stronger through the magic of discussion and debate. Here are a few tips to make that as productive as possible 1. Pre-flight the idea with the key players. See if you can get 1:1 time with as many of the stakeholders to review ahead of time. Understand their concerns, objections, etc. They are going to tell you things you didn’t think of and take your thought in better directions. It goes so much more smoothly if you learn those things ahead of time and strengthen the proposal with their feedback first 2. Learn the key players. Practice your customer research skills on your execs. What do they care about? What are their priorities? How are they measured? How will your proposal affect what they are trying to achieve? 3. Learn how to persuade. Data is your friend here, and it will trump intuition and gut all day every day. Some people respond better to quantitative stats (x% of customers use this feature), other to qualitative (Mary at customer X told me…). Have both and be prepared to shift based on to whom you’re speaking. 4. RESEARCH. Nothing important happens in the office. Speak with as many customers, users, partners, analysts as possible so you have ammo for (3) above

This is a daily occurrence for me. I believe almost all people are good and have the best intentions, learning where someone you diagree with is coming from is only going to make your POV much stronger. You'll refine your good ideas, learn blind spots or things you missed, and reform your bad ideas the more you seek out different opinions. 

Lots of people say they are data driven, not everyone actually is. I find people are either swayed by data or by stories. Both are valid - it's easy for anecdotal evidence to mislead, but it's also easy to cherry pick or manipulate statistics. So as a PM you need to be conversant in both. Emotional intelligence comes into play determining how to speak with someone successfully. Listen to them for clues - how do they make arguments? Are they citing statisticis or referencing stories? Speak to them in your language for better success. 

Unfortunately, this is one of the sad truths that comes with management. Sooner or later you will have to let someone go. It's never easy. I'm not sure it's ever broken me emotionally, but it's a really crappy experience for everyone involved. I really don't have any words of wisdom on this one, apart from not letting a bad situation drag on. If there's someone who is affecting morale (either by performing lower than others or by being toxic), think of the good of the team. Don't let one bad apple spoil the bunch. But be compassionate. We are all people and for the most part all have good hearts. Just because someone wasn't a good fit for the team doesn't mean they wouldn't be great elsewhere. Everyone deserves dignity and respect. 

The biggest trap new managers consistently fall into is relying on what got them where they are. As a new manager, you probably got promoted because you were a rockstar PM. One of my favorite parts of the (American) “The Office” is the 2-3 times they show Michael Scott go out on a sales call. Until you see that, your image of Michael is that of a completely incompetent, offensive and completely unqualified manager. But as a salesperson in the field he’s incredible. Clearly he got promoted due to his success as a salesperson into a job he’s not qualified for. Managing people requires a completely different skillset than managing products. You will feel uncomfortable, and will be tempted to go back to what you know you’re good at – managing products. Resist that temptation at all costs. It’s disempowering to your team and you are robbing them of valuable experience to grow and learn. It’s going to be really frustrating seeing a report struggle to do something you know you could do perfectly with very little effort. But you need to help them grow and learn. There’s a fine line between coaching and doing. Coach whenever possible.

Quite simply - get involved and that in things that affect the outcomes that matter to executives. First make sure you clearly understand what you’re executive teams focused on. Your organization should have some high level priorities are OK are as defined no limit what really matters to them. Most of the time that’s going to be top line revenue growth, but depending on the business cycle it may also be profitability. If your executive team hasn’t clearly articulated their top priorities, ask. You can also take cued from listening to them speak – what are the products, teams or initiatives they always go to as examples? Most likely those things are top of mind for them. Then do whatever you can to align yourself to those flagship products and initiatives that support those executive priorities. As a junior PM, presumably you’re not yet in charge of the flagship, high growth products or product areas, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get involved. Get to know the product leaders in that area and find ways to help out. Your work won’t go unnoticed. Finally, don’t be intimidated. Execs were all early career once, and we are all human. Find things to talk about, engage, seek out opportunities to bump into them in the hallway. Get and stay visible in any way possible.

I sought out executive visibility from almost day one. I got to know VPs and even CEOs at the companies I worked for. I worked with a wide variety of leaders, including one or two who in retrospect were toxic. As a PM you're frequently the target when things go poorly, that early experience in the line of sights built a pretty thicks skin - and also shaped how I treat people with kindness and respect today. 

Overwhelmingly, speaking the wrong language. Get out of the weeds, execs want to hear dollars and cents - business outcomes. Don't talk about user satisfaction in a vacuum, talk about how increasing user satisfaction is going to impact growth. Don't talk about paying down technical debt, talk about mitigating churn risk from outages resulting from technical debt. And so forth.

Here’s where you need to shift into an executive mindset. Good executives think in terms of costs and benefits and business outcomes they want to drive. And I’m not just talking about people in finance, sales and marketing – at the C-level EVERYONE thinks business outcomes -aka dollars and cents. If you want more resources for something, presumably it because it’s something that’s going to provide benefit to the business. Perhaps it’s a new product, or commonly requested feature, a new module, a new service offering, whatever. The commonality is that there’s a business reason why you are proposing what we’re proposing. You need to frame your ask in language that the C-Suite will understand – again, dollars and cents. Forget about DAUs, uptime, defect escape rates, etc. Talk about that stuff and the C-suite’s eyes are going to glaze over. Translate those things into new customer acquisition, churn reduction, a lower AWS bill, etc. Don’t know how to do that? No problem, partner with someone in finance. They can do this all day every day. And embrace some uncertainty. Your model will almost certainly be wrong. But who cares? If someone digs into why your model is wrong they are discussing your idea and the benefits it provides, and that’s already a win. You can iterate together and learn in the process. 

This comes down to transparency. See my later response on this topic. Make sure everyone on the exec team clearly understands the priorities, and more importantly, the non-priorities. When they make an urgent ask, make sure they understand the tradeoffs relative to the more durable well understood priorities. 

I'm going to push back on this one. If you're a commercial business, anything you're building should be monetizable. Now that doesn't mean you have to charge for everything. We have a freemium strategy as part of our PLG motion. But that "free" product directly leads to trials, conversions and paying cusotmers for our non-free products. That's monetization and that's how you show value.