Don’t Wage War with a Worker Hive

One important skill for a Product Manager is the ability to sell your innovations within your organization. Yes, you did user research. Yes, you have data to back your hypothesis. But how do you build a coalition around your idea so it has the legs to launch? A lot of dynamics play into this; one of which is working within your company’s cultural and organizational boundaries to get your product idea to the finish line.

Your company’s competencies and values are built unconsciously over time, but they are not necessarily labeled and communicated. Internalizing them helps your team creatively exercise those competencies. As a PM, you can successfully build coalitions around product strategies ONLY if you play within the boundaries of these competencies.

Swords or shields? — a timely example

Let’s say your enterprise SaaS company has some financial runway during the COVID-19 pandemic, you have some pathways forward, including:

1. Flex the warrior bee. Strap heat and take over neighboring hives — e.g. undercut the competition’s prices to gain market share.
2. Channel the worker bee. Focus on providing value to existing customers — e.g. delight customers by helping them navigate the uncertainty.

Some companies gravitate to the ‘flex the warrior bee’ strategy - mobilize a task force to identify competitors who, unlike you, have been running “paycheck to paycheck”, and offer their customers your solution for pennies, bleeding competitors dry. Sneaky, right? This allows you to come out of this crisis with your foot in the door with 3–4 new enterprise customers, ripe for expansion.

Other companies turn inward, focused on keeping and expanding existing customers — solve complex problems for your very large customers. Use your worker bees to build and nurture strong relationships, and leverage them to weather the storm while your competitors (who have taken more risk) struggle and fail.

What kind of company is yours?

Of course it’s not black and white, but organizational identity oozes from the fabric of your strategy and culture. Here are a couple indicators:

1. How does your executive team communicate strategy? If your primary success metric is market share or growth over retention and adoption, you might be a warrior hive.
2. How is your company built and where is it investing? Do you have a large sales and marketing team? Or are you heavy on engineering and customer success?

My name is Herschel, and I am a worker bee

As a PM, you have to internalize what kind of hive you’re living in to have high impact and influence. You have to label it. Label it loud and proud, and you will align yourself with your organization’s competencies.

You then will think up product strategies that you can sell and your team can execute on. Your engineers will build software that scales in the direction your customers need. Your marketing team will blast out messages that your target market will resonate with.

Embrace the worker bee, and go forth delighting your customers with good product thinking.