“It’s complicated” — the relationship between Product Development and GR

Photo by Shaah Shahidh on Unsplash

Impactful GR functions are close to the core of the business or NGO they are supporting — they inhale the mission statement and overarching strategic goals. Their focus areas, skills on the team and achievements directly relate to them. What should the relationship and integration be with product development? A question that we think deserves more attention and thought. When was the last team a GR function was mentioned in a [shipped] E-mail from a product lead?

“Developers, Developers, Developers”

Whether it’s a piece of software, a service or a physical product most often the goals and mission of a company are best expressed and often defined through its products. Moreover, the part of the org actually designing and building these products are usually the most coveted resource and a bit of a holy grail.

Rightly so — in the world of technology the valuations of companies are often not based on the existing products only but on the ability for the organization to continue to push out innovative solutions into the market. A saying goes “if Aliens were to invade Silicon Valley and they give a CEO the choice to take away all their engineers or all their user data — they would certainly pick to keep the engineers”.

Making the case for a role of GR and Public Policy in product development

We’ve often found that GR teams are having trouble defining their role and value add vis a vis the most important stakeholders internally — developers, product managers and business leads of particular product lines.

From the vantage point of these orgs, the world of “non-eng” looks simple:

• ⚖️Legal — there to tell them what they can and cannot do and find creative ways to ship new products, usually hold strong veto power
• 📣Comms — there to tell the world how great the product is, build a compelling narrative and “land” the story connecting the product to overall company strategy
• 💈Marketing — there to bring the product to the customer and distill its USPs for the public at large and get the word out in a scalable way
• 💸Sales — there to sell the product to the customer and drive revenue

What about Government Relations?

“Surely relationships with policy-makers and an analysis of upcoming legislation and broader regional trends don’t and shouldn’t matter for product development? Yet another team that is going to stand in my way to ship my product? I need to listen to our customers needs, not to bureaucrats and lawmakers to build the best possible product.”

We beg to differ and want to make the case that in today’s economy the long-term success of your product strategy no longer just depends on whether you have product-market-fit and the right business development and sales team to bring it to your customers — dare we say it for certain companies you need to prove that your product has a net-positive impact on the economy and society at large. A “move fast and break things” culture and a tendency to “ship first, iterate later” provides ample room for GR professionals to be involved.

Below a few first ideas on what specific tasks and actions a GR team could help with during product development. These are by no means complete, we would love to hear about your experiences and ideas, what are we missing? Are these compelling enough reasons for PMs and product owners to check in with the GR team and see you as a critical piece in the puzzle of product development?

1. 💡Ideation and Prototyping: Be involved early, not as a blocker but providing guidance on how products will be perceived and any political reactions to be expected. You can be seen as the “feedback loop for society”. In many cases a political backlash against a product launch can be just as harmful as no product-market fit or legal issues — think about the reaction to self-driving cars or the recent discussion around Zoom’s privacy and security practices. Google X has someone with the job title “Head of getting moonshots ready for contact with the real world” — think about that.
2. 🆕Legislation as a driver for product development: Particularly in more regulated industries understanding and highlighting upcoming legislative changes in key markets can actually kick-start the development of an entirely new product line. Rather than seeing regulation as limiting your product options, we think they can expand and inspire them in many cases.
3. 🤓Educate policy-makers about new products early: While official approvals by regulators are of course needed in some cases, seldom do GR teams “pitch” new products to policy-makers ahead of or shortly after a launch. Should we be doing more of that? Particularly if it is connected to your policy narrative and brand you are building, product demos can be an effective way to build trust.
4. 🧨Integrated crisis communication: When your institution is in the public spotlight (positive or negative) it is very often related to a product or service you are offering and something having gone very well or very wrong… Having the right relationships to the product organisation will prove to be key in handling these situations well.
5. 🧩Policy work “through” products: Picking certain products and turning it into a policy campaign can be effective in shifting perception and “walking the walk” on previous commitments. Whether these are principles expressed through a specific design of a product feature or showing the strategic relevance of a certain region or sector launching products makes this more real than any story or promise will do.

“Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics”

We believe that the way you structure your GR team and where it sits within the broader org is absolutely critical and creates plenty of path-dependencies (watch out for an upcoming blog post about the subject). Given that as far as we know most GR teams do not report into product orgs and often do not have a strong link at the executive level with product owners, how do we best solve for this? What are some best practices both in terms of structure but individual tactics that can help?

• Having a dedicated “product policy” team or if not feasible clear owners and DRIs within the GR team for major product initiatives is a good start, but that’s only going to work if you have a clear value proposition and if it’s a two-way-street.
• Finding the right “product person” that has an interest in the realm of GR can unlock such a relationship. Rather than just looking at org charts, maybe there’s an engineer or a PM with a degree in political science (yup, they exist).
• If there is a formalized on-boarding experience for engineers and PMs, how about including a 45min session with someone from the GR team to educate them about your role and scope of your work?
• If your organization has formal “product review” processes and documentation, think about a light-touch way GR can be involved. Maybe through the legal side by teaming up with Product Counsels?

This certainly is a topic with more questions than answers for now but we think that if GR does not manage to build a connection and provide value-add to such an essential part of any organization it will struggle to play a strategic role. What are your thoughts and experiences on this subject? We’d love to hear them!