The Key to Global Product Management? Thinking “Glo-cally” (Part 1 of 3)

Executing an effective global product management strategy is an exciting challenge for any leader. As Chief Digital Officer for 7-Eleven, my directive is to lead our teams to do this across 60,000+ stores in 18 countries. 

This raises some compelling questions. How can we enable the digitalization of our company across so many geographies and cultures? What’s the best way to accommodate market-specific differences and needs? Can we ‘’think globally’’ but ‘’act locally’’ in order to create a platform solution that can be fully leveraged by local markets?

Global product management is tricky, but can ultimately be successful – and rewarding. During my 14 months in this role, I have turned to three key philosophies to make our global product management strategy a reality:

1.    Think “Glo-cally”

2.    Don’t fall into the trap of U.S. Prioritization, even subconsciously!

3.    Embrace Global Learnings (they can flow both ways)

In today’s post, I’d like to tackle the first one: Think “Glo-cally”

Every product starts from a customer problem, so start by taking time to understand if customers in other global regions are facing similar issues. It doesn’t take a formal study (though you should conduct detailed personas and customer journeys). Sometimes few phone calls with local teams, quick web research, or industry reports will be enough to give you a sense of the landscape. For example, I recently searched “food delivery near me” on Baidu.com and was able to find how quickly the ‘delivery’ or O2O (online to offline) market has grown in China.

While your team must consider the architecture for a product in a truly global fashion, and build your product as ‘blocks’ of common experiences that cut across geographies, supplementing them with localized insights provides a framework for a layered approach to a global product roadmap. A microservices-based architecture and use of cloud technologies provide the foundation you need for a truly globally-ready technology platform that is effective at the local level.

It’s also important to keep in mind that certain types of technology or services may have  varying culturally-specific use cases across markets. For example, mobile screens are used very differently in Japan vs the US. So while the service or capability may be similar, we – as global product managers – must customize the experience to the needs and expectations of each market that we serve. Balancing technology stack consistency and user experience uniqueness is a tough challenge, but it’s a satisfying (and even fun) puzzle to solve!

Product leaders...what are your thoughts on this topic? Please share your experiences.

Next time … Don’t fall into the trap of roadmap prioritization with a U.S. lens!