One of my most frustrating conversations in recent memory occurred a couple years ago, when I was working in a combined product management & marketing role. This was at a small company – about 70 employees – and I was, in fact, the *only* person responsible for product management and product marketing. As is always the case with product management, my job was multi-faceted – with big chunks of my time dedicated to working with engineering, sales & customers, and business development partners.
I also, of course, was performing typical product marketing functions – developing and refining our product messaging, creating content (presentations, datasheets, whitepapers), as well as executing outbound activities such as webcasts. (We had 2 other people responsible for marketing communications & field marketing, who I worked closely with).
Enough context…the conversation in question was with one of the lead engineers on the team, who, in her very direct way, asked me “what is it, exactly, that you do?”. She was asking me with a combination of curiosity, humor, and antagonism ; she knew quite well that, as product manager, I set each release’s functionality, prioritized customer enhancements & bug fixes, and helped write the stories for the engineering iterations. She was really asking about the aspects of my job that were not directly visible to her.
Even as a very technical (and very intelligent) engineer working in a company creating software development tools, she was not very well aware of how the business operated – the processes and requirements around marketing and sales, or the overall dynamics of the business. In her particular role (combined with her personality), she didn’t frequently interact with customers or sales, so as I began to explain “what I did”, I kept having to back up, and provide some context for her. For example:
…
“I define the messaging for the product”
“What do you mean, messaging? Are you talking about middleware?”
“No, messaging…how we position the product”
“What do you mean, position?”
“Position the product in the market”
“What does that mean?”
“Uh, determine how we describe the product, what its most salient features and differentiators are, and explain what the technical and business benefits are. And pricing.”
…
When our conversation was done, she departed with a blank look in her eyes. Clearly, I didn’t connect with her. She had so little context that I kept having to define my terms, which led us into a conversational labyrinth from which we were unable to escape.
Hopefully, this blog series will help address these kinds of misalignments, in some fashion.
My next series of postings take us on a foundational journey: Anatomy of a Software Company
