More Than A Passing Venn

Perhaps like many of us in the product/service/innovation space, we like to imagine we find inspiration in unlikely places…though the reality is it most often happens when we’re scrolling social media feeds.

That’s actually the case for this post. A few days ago, I stopped swiping on a simple Venn diagram related to Product Management (PdM) as seen here (thanks REFORGE).

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I’m pretty certain that most PdMs recognize this as the practical representation of our careers building things (or helping others build things) …the familiar overlap of need, process and outcome, and a perpetual reminder to our companies and clients why they need people like us residing at the convergence.

In this case, it helped me recall a pitch I gave to some start-up founders a few years ago, trying to correlate the fundamentals of Design Thinking (DT) with their ambitions to bring cool ideas to market. A reminder of those key DT elements shown here:

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The best part of this construct is comparing and weighing the components. Who? Why? What? When? How? How many lenses can we use to view a customer, consumer, end-user, stakeholder in the equation? Well…as many as it takes, right? As shown below, it is just a lot of fun to ponder:

But back to what Product Managers do. We must layer on an even wider range of perspectives to illustrate, amplify, challenge and validate concepts (also part of the DT ethos). As every start-up or company should know by now, many products will fail, generally for one or more of these reasons:

• Failing to understand consumer needs (D)
• Fixing a Non-existent problem (D)
• Wrong target market (D/V)
• Incorrect pricing (D/V)
• Weak team/capabilities (F)
• Too long to develop (F/V)
• Poor execution/launch (V)

And with all these dynamics in play, PdMs must help their design/dev/biz teams stay open, objective and accepting of honest critique. With all due respect to those following the “move fast and break things” model, it’s worth it for founders and their teams to go a few steps further to de-risk their ideas. PdMs should pump the brakes when needed.

So, for my entrepreneurial audience I substituted alternative terms for the primary Design Thinking components, which opened a conversational path to dive deeper into the things that could influence/impact their concepts and go-to-market approach. As below:

?And…most of the founders said “Meh.” Agreed, not sexy talk. But to scale anything (mountains, markets) you need the right tools, yeah? Which includes at least a passing consideration of topics that (if nothing else) shows future investors that you’ve got a longer view and a sense of what drives NPS, CSAT, LTV and ROI, among other metric acronyms.

Final point, as PdMs, we must continue to shine a bright light on the intersections, looking for constraints, barriers and guardrails that cause friction between innovations and the problems they’re meant to solve (another nod to DT). So, one more set of considerations:

This is why start-ups need PdMs, either in their teams or on the outside offering help. Founders are notoriously network-oriented, unabashedly and energetically making connections with potential users, investors, tech, talent and…so on. Right on for them! Keep it up! But that ain’t all, folks.

I encourage those of us with a PdM approach and Design Thinking mindset to inhabit this symbiotic niche within the entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem, insisting that founders comprehend all the elements of a successful product "recipe" and be a cache of knowledge, insights and best practices to meet our PdM mission: building things (or helping others build things), and effectively navigating the overlap of need, process and outcome to get all those cool innovations to market.

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