A Gap between Product Management and People Ops
When I looked back at my experience working in a few tech companies, I observed this similar pattern. A lot of effort is concerted to coordinate multiple departments as part of building a successful product. Typically, the initial effort is concentrated around Product and Engineering. However, over time, the coordination grows to include larger teams: Marketing, Sales, Operations, and so on. It was far from the coordination between Product and Engineering only.
During those coordination touch points, we’d often ask our colleagues to do something from us. We need their help. For example, a Product Manager would ask for help from the Customer Care team to signal him about cases reported by users. Or, a Marketing staff would coordinate with the Product team to build external messages about a certain feature. Those cross-department interactions often fail to remind — let alone motivate — that we’re all in this together; to accomplish a higher goal, which can only be achieved if we’re working as a team. This is understandable because those interactions are typically task-based: “I need you to do XYZ” type of interaction, rarely a conversation about the bigger goal. Sure, everybody is busy. There are always the business-as-usual (BAU) that needs to be taken care of on a daily basis.
As the company grows bigger in size, the coordination is harder. Too often, we find individual department operates in a silo. Each has its own north star, whose location is often different from the company’s direction.
Something needs to glue us together. Understanding a list of cool features will not bring us together. Focusing on how we build our product usually does not excite people to stick together. A compelling narrative of why we’re doing what we’re doing… might. It will if the narrative is communicated properly.
Spending some effort to craft a company narrative might feel unnatural. One reason is that it is not easy. A typical company is more likely to spend more resources to add more people, which feels more natural, rather than finding ways to improve the existing teams to work better and more efficiently.
When it comes to helping people working together, the common step is to give the assignment to People Ops department (or Human Resources, as more generally known in the past). Most HR departments are not readily equipped to take on this task. Their strength is in employee benefits, employment-related compliance issues, hiring. They might be able to assist but not the exact role you’re looking for.
In a tech company, I’ve seen the Product team took a more much active role in owning the narrative and communicating it to the rest of the company. This doesn’t mean Product is in a better position to do so, compared to HR. It happens because “filling white space” (ie do it until you can delegate it) is often associated with the product role.
We believe there is a gap between Product Management and People Ops that needs to be properly addressed. This is the space Product Narrative will fill in. Our services focus on narrative building, product management coaching, and OKR training.
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