I build high performing product teams. Building product teams is my niche; I pride myself on bringing together skilled individuals who complement one another and challenge each other to achieve great results.
If I wasn’t in the martech product space, I’d still be building teams and, in fact, I’ve done so with a brewery and even little league baseball teams. After many years as an engineer, I realized that what I enjoyed most was the strategic work encompassing Why a specific software element was needed (product) and How it was to be created (people and process).
What I’ve learned over the years is that the right team can tackle any challenge and, as such, my order truly is People, Product, Process…but it sure didn’t start that way and I’m always looking for ways to improve.
When I first started transitioning to be a manager of people/teams years ago, I was green, admittedly. Throughout my life, I was the kid to rally a group, lead a class project, and rise to the shift lead type of roles in my pre-software days. I took management courses but, in my engineer brain, there were specs/processes and all that was needed was for everyone involved to “follow the script” for success (!). My focus was the end result (product) with the understanding that the process would yield the desired outcome. My rationale was that the “right” people were on my teams because, after all, I hired them or kept them around if I inherited them. In truth, in both cases, I was lucky that the talented ones stayed around because I did not give very good personal guidance. What I did offer, however, was my care in them as individuals. This was a spark — my going to bat for my people, insulating them from politics, etc. — that held my teams together despite my shortcomings…but, I was still learning.
Early on, I did not see the true value and power in 1:1 meetings because, again with the engineer brain, if there was an issue, it would/should come up in a meeting. Yes, I cared about my team members and championed them, however, what I was missing was that my people needed individual guidance. My team looked to me as a coach not as a manager. Coaches understand deeply an individual’s strengths and weaknesses and work to keep them growing/evolving in their niche.
That last part is very key; coaching concentrates on what drives the individual, their goals/aspirations, and what the individual believes is valuable.
I often joke that most of my job is listening to people bitch/cry in my office (when such a space existed!) and, sadly, for a decent clip of my management career, I thought that just being a sounding board was helpful. What has changed — though I still see value in being available for bitching/crying — is that I have learned the value in getting ahead of these situations via active listening and am practicing this very powerful element to be a better coach.
In any relationship, being an active participant is key to a successful relationship. Success in a relationship is getting meaning/value in the form of support, shared likes/desires, goals, etc. Getting ahead of issues in this context (coaching) is to be actively processing concerns, fears, anxiety, etc., while keeping in focus that (shared) value and meaning. Doing so will not only build a better relationship but help craft plans for improvement individually and for the team at-large.
Coaching is listening.
To say that you “Value People First” requires a deep personal understanding of what drives someone to do what they do as a member of your team. Does the work on your team jive with their niche and, perhaps more importantly, what can you do to enable this aspect? This notion of niche enablement, let’s call it, is an exercise in getting to the heart of individual value derived from the work performed. Would they be doing similar work on a different team, a different firm, or even, a completely different industry? What is their desired career path relative to their niche?
Crafting high performing product teams is a journey. Journeys ebb and flow by nature and you have to be able to adjust to enjoy the ride (or deliver great software). The point of this post is to help me visualize the next plot point in my journey; actively seeking feedback from my team members on how I can better understand and enable their niche. Part of this exercise is also delving into how my team members see physical “value”, i.e., what of their team accountability is the “value” metric that best represents their work? This aspect, working with individuals to define individual value delivery as a metric, will be a conversation for another post. For now, niche enablement and active coaching feedback is my focus.
People, Product, Process.
