Change Management: Without Fear
Why is it so difficult to guide the evolution of Product Marketing teams at legacy IT vendors? Here’s a candid list of leader personality traits proven to handicap progress.
The Cheerleader: they signed up for a series of bold goals and big bets, but each and every one of their monthly ‘All Hands’ meetings don’t include any meaningful or substantive assessment of the team’s collective accomplishment toward goals.
The Historian: they remind anyone that attempts to raise the bar of expectations that this ‘new goal’ was attempted years ago, and the result was a failure. Therefore, they suggest there’s no point to try any new approach to the same challenge — failure is inevitable.
The Competitor: they say they’re aligned with customers, but everything that they prioritize tends to be competitor-centric. They care about the comparative ranking of product features and functions (e.g. magic quadrants, etc), not what really enables a customer to achieve desired business outcomes. They say to the market, “my feature set is bigger and better than theirs.”
The Taskmaster: they tell you how diligently their team is focused on agreed KPI metrics. However, at close inspection, each objective can be easily attainable and is very unlikely to actually address the biggest challenges that are holding back significant progress. The quantification and reporting of ‘busy work’ trivia takes much of their time and effort.
The Self-Promoter: they are often consumed by fear that they have not fully ‘justified their existence’ to the executive leadership, so they insist on demonstrating active engagement in mass quantities of questionable activities. They say to their direct reports, “I don’t care what is most likely to benefit the company’s strategic goals, we will focus on our team’s appearance of productivity.”
The Preacher: they’re fulfilled by their ability to preach to the converted — those low-level roles in the customer’s IT organization that are influencers, but have no decision-making authority. They will, when mandated or instructed, make a token effort to create a facade that they’ll attempt to enable front-line sellers to reach out and engage new contacts with customers and prospects. However, their one and only religion is a product-centered GTM. They’re incapable of making the transition to move up the value chain to drive net-new growth. This trait is most common.
In summary, you’ll find combinations of these traits in product marketing leaders, from the CMO downwards through the ranks of senior directors, etc. Their loyal minions are very fearful of challenging this status quo, because these dysfunctional behaviors seem to be acceptable, or perhaps even encouraged.
So, back to the core question, why is it so difficult to guide the much-needed evolution of Product Marketing organizations? Fear of change is more powerful than aspirations to excel and grow.
My list of the opportunities to ignite #change follows:
Read the Digital Polymath — by David H Deans and be fearless
