Building product in a 'downturn'

It was early 2009, I was barely a few months into my first corporate engineering job at one of the big 5 tech companies in the world. Fresh out of LEAP training, motivated and enthusiastic about my dream job, when I had my first rendezvous with a ‘recession’ or ‘downturn’. Constant social media validation wasn’t as popular back then, so a downturn meant real chaos and not just an evolving twitter crisis.?

Colleagues and mentors left with their personal belongings, security personnels were visibly present and most manager offices (not cubicles back then) were occupied with all day meetings with blinds down. And while my ‘role wasn’t impacted’, I did have to switch from an active R&D engineer role to a support analyst in the same organization, which later defined the course of my career guided by empathy, focus and accountability.

Cut to today, where the economic environment has shifted from growth to operational efficiency, from thriving to surviving, and from transparency to secrecy (I personally dislike this third part more than the other two). Treating this macro situation like a product, I wanted to break down the problem into its component parts and help put a framework for smaller companies to drive prioritization decisions. Three key parts

1. Understand the challenge
2. Identify the use-cases and solution
3. Implement the solution and measure success?

** Scope of problem might differ for companies of different sizes and maturity but skills required to thrive through it would be the similar

We will double click into this framework through an example problem that many small and mid-size companies face today - are we building the right product? Or should we restructure and pivot?

Step 1 - Understanding the Challenge?

How to best deliver product and business value for customers.

Core components include?

1. Deliver the right product - Does your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) want this product
2. Deliver at a time when it’s relevant to your customers - Does your ICP want this product today?
3. Deliver it at a cost that can work for you and your customers - Can your ICP pay for this product today?

Step 2 - Identifying the Focus Areas

Core components include?

1. If you are a multi-product company, then some products will help you to survive during an economic downturn while others will help you thrive post that period. Identifying what those products are, and making crucial re-prioritization decisions would be helpful.?
2. Similarly, deciding between selling additional products to your existing customers at discounted prices or selling comprehensive product packages to new customers at same prices are a few Go-to-market motions to prioritize from. While both motions will work, employing both comes with significant cost and effort tradeoffs.?

Step 3 - Efficient Execution

Where do most companies struggle when scaling, especially in the rough macro-economic environments? Driving the desired outcomes as planned and pivoting if needed, by making hard choices across people, products and systems.?

Core components include?

1. Focus
2. Maintaining autonomy while driving accountability

Firstly, implementing any decision making and prioritization framework is helpful in such conditions. It helps to drive both focus and accountability. Secondly, in an already chaotic macro environment, if decision making is delayed and cyclical, employees lose trust in leadership. Similarly for prioritization, if you can decide and provide rationale for decisions, and ensure they can be both communicated and implemented throughout the organization by trusted leaders at every level, it can be game changing for employee focus, speed of delivery and motivation levels. Lastly, Speed of decision making can be fastened by assigning drivers and giving them decision powers, wherein they can explain the rationale clearly to the executives and to the implementers.?

Most problems can be solved with a 'structured' mindset and 'ruthless' prioritization and as we navigate through these times together, hoping for the community to come together to share experiences and ideas.

Feel free to share ideas, thoughts and suggestions at [email protected]