Product Management for Resilience
Product managers are used to viewing success from many different angles. Success has long been more than revenue and profit. Userbase development has often taken over as the foundation on which to build lasting success with a product and the company behind it. To develop their user base, product managers and designers have learned to focus on the individuals, research their needs and desires, and abstract from their findings the ideas for new products and innovative breakthroughs. This focus of human-centeredness has been instrumental in the creation of tremendous product and business success. It is the driving force behind companies like Apple and Tesla which manage to redefine entire fields of products and their industries by creating unparalleled experiences for their users.
Building products the human-centered way is not a straight line. Much has been said about the uncertainty that transcends and envelops the entire process. As humans, people don’t express their actual inner wishes they may hold, and even if a product manages to tick all the boxes its target customers should long for, they may still not end up buying it. While the product was in development, regulations may have changed or new trends may have rendered its value proposition obsolete. All of this amounts to enormous uncertainty in the daily life of a product manager, and indeed, dealing with this situation in a positive and constructive way while also motivating a team to build top-notch technology is seen as the most important professional trait they can have.
As we are entering the third decade of the 21st century, the uncertainty our society is facing might be higher than ever before. Rebuilding the economy in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic is the most obvious aspect driving it, but at the same time, the effects of the progressing climate crisis are becoming more and more visible in various places around the globe. Both are major drivers of uncertainty. The Coronavirus pandemic showed the world just how much risk was built into the globalized economy and its complicated, long supply chains. For product managers, the challenge now is to build products that contribute to a stronger society, a society that is able to cope with the immediate as well as the mid- and long-term effects of the climate crisis. Without it, the blows the Coronavirus pandemic delivered to the global economy will pale in the face of the future effects of the climate crisis.
Any product will be evaluated on whether it makes society more resilient, more able to cope with unforeseen changes in the environment or in its own social fabric.
The products defining this third decade of the 21st century will be measured by different metrics of success than in the past decades. Product managers are used to looking at risks of usability, feasibility, and business viability. Now, resilience is added to the list. Any product will be evaluated on whether it makes society more resilient, more able to cope with unforeseen changes in the environment or in its own social fabric. This is product-external resilience, and the concept of sustainability is embedded into it. At the same time, products are not viable if they don’t feature product-internal resilience. This refers to the ability to make, deliver, and use the product even in difficult, changing circumstances.
It will be up to teams of engineers, designers, and product managers everywhere in the world to come up with new solutions that help society become more resilient as we enter the climate crisis, plus whatever else uncertainty will throw at us. For such solutions to be successful as products, they will nevertheless have to be usable and feasible to create, as well as economically viable. The human will still want to be at the center of the experience. Nobody is saying this will be an easy task. But it might become one of the most impactful, most creative, and hopefully most rewarding lines of work. Disruption and technological innovation at levels never before experienced will be necessary to transform industries and their workforces, help cities reinvent themselves, and find ways to reliably feed a world population of 10 billion in a volatile environment. Welcome to the challenge of being responsible for this world during the 2020s.
