Product Management Question Corner: Mary K. Marsden, Acxiom
Posted by Ivan Chalif in Interviews, UncategorizedToday’s Product Management Question Corner brings us some insights from Mary K. Marsden (she prefers just Mary K), New Business Leader for Retail and CPG accounts at Acxiom, a developer of large-scale enterprise business intelligence and marketing databases. While Acxiom is not a start up in any sense of the word, Mary K has participated in her fair share of entrepreneurial efforts. Read more below about how she leveraged her Product Management experience in CEO and leadership roles.
Q: How did you become involved in Product Management and was it planned?
A: No, this aspect of my career was not planned. When I was working in Marketing Communications at Novell back in 1988, we were growing so fast and having challenges recruiting people our executive team expanded marketing’s responsibility and that is when I got my first leadership role in Product Marketing.
We were divided into 2 discipline areas Product Marketing and Product Engineering. Product marketing was responsible for the market requirements, pricing, release schedules, communicating with Sales, Marcom, PR, product launches, new release priorities, bug fix priorities… We were also responsible for the business case and presenting any new products to the innovation center. Product Engineering defined the most efficient way to develop the product we had designed.
Q: What are the biggest challenges that Product Managers face?
A: I believe the biggest challenge Product Managers face is knowing how to prioritize product functionality. What do customers really need and will pay for. It is easy to fall in love and start creating products and services but will the market value the product and will they pay for it. The balance of development to revenue is a perpetual challenge.
Q: What is your greatest Product Management achievement?
A: My greatest achievement again was at Novell releasing an SDK (software developers kit) in conjunction with Microsoft’s operating system release. Microsoft did not make it easy for partners/competitors to write software to their platform. Getting a product out the door on schedule, that worked was a Herculean accomplishment for our team.
Q: What was your worst Product Management mistake and how did you recover?
A: We developed a computer telephony application that was a “great idea” only we could never get the telco companies to adopt our products. We did not recover and the company failed. We did not understand the market, and we created the product mostly in a vacuum with some input from consumers. We learned a hard lesson on that one; we had raised $1M in venture funding based on our business plan and a rough prototype, getting the money was the easier part getting into the market proved impossible for us.
Q: What Product Management tool(s) would you consider most effective and why?
A: Listening. Listening to the market, your customers or potential customers, your competitors… I know you wanted me to suggest a tool, the tool does not matter if the product team is not listening.
Q: Where is the best place for the Product Management function in an organization and why?
A: I believe the best place is aligned with marketing. Understanding the market, the gaps and the clear needs of the customer are critical to Product Management success. Also the release cycles are so rapid now and most of the debugging is done in partnership with the customer – putting Product Management customer facing is the best for the organization and the customers.
Q: How has your experience as a Product Manager influenced you as a CEO or founder?
A: Having a product management background made me a better CEO it let me focus the company’s resources effectively. We spent our time and money on product features that made a competitive difference. It also taught me how to communicate with my development team and how to architect the solution I wanted without telling them what to do. That gave the team the space to be creative within the needs of the business. My background in Product Management also made me a better judge of time lines. We got the first version of our platform to market on time, that keeps the investors happy and that is important in the very early stages of the business.
Q: If someone told you that they wanted to transition from a Product Manager role to CEO (or founder), what would you tell them?
A: Spend a year or two in Marketing, Marcom, and/or Sales–all the customer-facing functions. You will learn to “hear the customer needs” and be able to translate that into products, and services. You will learn to prioritize and manage the resources of your company much more effectively. Also you will see the gaps in the market and come up with better ideas. Don’t create a product in a vacuum; 9 out of 10 companies fail because they create products no one cares about or ever hears about.
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Mary K’s question for The Productologist:
Q: What is the biggest challenge product managers face in today’s development environment? What company has the best product managers – why, what do they do that others don’t?
A: There are many Product Management challenges, but the biggest one is the lack of consistency in Product Manager roles across (and sometimes even within) companies. There are so many differences in job descriptions, functional responsibilities, placement in the organization, and goals, that it is difficult to make the transition between one Product Management job and another.
Take positions like Account Manager, Marcom Director, or Development Manager. They each have relatively defined roles, responsibilities, and success characteristics. It’s not guaranteed that a Marcom Manager at one company will be a success at another, but the variance in the necessary skills and experience to be a good fit across several companies is minimal.
On the flip side, 20 Product Management job postings could have 20 unique skill sets and experience requirements, as well as be situated in many different areas of the organization. Is the team Agile-based or do they do more traditional waterfall? If it’s Agile, what flavor? These little differences matter a lot. At start ups versus mature companies, Product Management might not even look like the same job!
While diversity is usually a good thing within an organization, it can hinder the development of Product Management professionals by making job requirements so specific that very few candidates are actually a good fit, at least on paper. With that in mind, it’s difficult to say which companies, if any, turn out the best Product Managers. Big companies typically have a lot of process in place, so their Product Managers get a healthy dose of that, for better or worse, but they are also highly specialized, so they lack the broad general skills required in smaller teams. Product Managers at small companies get a lot of experience working directly with many functional areas within an organization, but they don’t get to do many of the purely Product Management tasks because they are spread so thin.
That’s why hiring Product Managers can be such a difficult and drawn out process. It’s a lot like trying to find a good dance partner…it’s not one-size-fits-all.
A little more about Mary K:
Mary K is a proven entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in global marketing and management with some of the software industry’s best companies. Over the last decade, Mary K has built two successful consulting companies that focused on strategic management marketing and the “smart application and commercialization of technology”. Her clients included leaders in the industry, such as Microsoft, Novell, HP, and Fujitsu. Prior to that Mary K had a very successful management tenure with Novell, Inc. during the rapid growth stage. She has also led the successful commercialization of dozens of software products and rolled-out over 20+ companies in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan.
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