Strategies that Fasten Results for your Product Team — Samuel Tobi

Samuel Tobi Olowookere is a Product Manager with a background in Mechanical Engineering. He has over 3 years of experience solving problems, leading teams, and innovation in the tech industry. From additive manufacturing to EdTech, PropTech, and now, FinTech. Samuel believes we find fulfillment as humans when we create value and simplify things.

Currently, he lives his belief: inspiring fulfillment as a Product Manager at Mikro solutions Inc., by simplifying problems, improving processes, and helping people enjoy the ride.

So let’s get straight to it, Is strategy important? Explain your reasoning.

Glad to be here, thank you for having me. So I will like to see this as a co-learning session. If there’s any of my opinions you don’t agree with, I am very much open to discussions.

A lot of us know what we do, or what our products do. On the other hand, not a lot of us also know why our products exist. There is a concept called the golden circle. For those familiar with it, it’s a perfect tool for understanding our purpose and the purpose of things.

The idea is that things achieve a higher purpose and use when we understand why they exist, our decisions are also easier to measure and track when we understand why.

Understanding “why?” solves a lot of problems, it helps us connect on a level deeper than outputs, we can relate based on outcomes. Strategy is the how to what we are doing to fulfil or live our why.

In simple terms, your answer to why is the vision or mission statement of your company or product. your strategy is how you achieve this vision through what you do or make [In this case your product(s)].

In your opinion, who is responsible for coming up with strategies for the team; product/business strategies?

I will like to differentiate product and business strategies first, business strategies are covered in product strategies, since the product must make money [business goals]. paper is important lol. On the other hand, Product strategies are not always covered in business strategies.

In terms of responsibilities. For product led companies, it is the responsibility of the product manager to come up with the product strategy. C-suite in form of the CEO may come up with the vision and mission of the company. but for a product to be successful, the product vision and strategy must align, not just together but alongside the company vision/mission.

A product vision represents a common goal (a larger purpose) for the whole organisation, the strategy explains a high level approach about how we will achieve the goal. This is the product team’s responsibility.

How do you communicate these strategies with all stakeholders involved?

Three things, I learnt this from one of product plan’s articles on product strategy: Vision, goals and initiatives.

The summary is your product vision must be clear. stakeholders need to understand why you are building the product, the problem you intend to solve for the user, how it connects to the company vision and mission.

Initiatives are high level summaries of your strategies, increase customer retention, increase customer engagement…

Goals — present your initiative in a way they are SMART goals. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

As much as you can, tell us the practical steps we can take as Product Managers to ensure the product team stays on track with the agreed strategies.

1. The product vision: all members of the product team must understand the vision, why the products exist
2. Goals: data analysis and tracking must align with what the team has decided to track.
3. Effective communication: it is important that the vision, goal and north star is consistently repeated so that it guides the roadmap and product development. New team members need to be onboarded on this as well. Communication within the team is important. clear, concise communication, in a language the whole team understands
4. Clear documentation: Do not create bogus documents, no one understand or reads
5. Attention to onboarding: Hire highly skilled team members and always encourage your team members to improve their skills
6. Work culture: Ensure the workplace is comfortable enough for everyone to work

Some Contributions where made during the session;

Princess Akari: A lot of times we want our teams to ship faster but we loose sight of some distractions that plague us;

• Long, extended meetings
• Bogus documentation (Samuel mentioned this but I just wanted to reiterate), a lot of times other product team members don’t use these docs because they get really tired just looking through and when they don’t use the documents, of course they’d be lots of back and forths.
• Strife within the team, subtle hatred. (This is funny but it’s real lol).
• Office politicssssss!!!!
• Low morale within the team; everyone is tired, no motivation.

So, to see “quick” results;

• Have very skilled set of people in your team and ensure they are always up-skilling.
• If meetings are absolutely necessary, make them short, with an agenda. Straight to the point.
• Your documentation should be be straight to the point as well. A 32 paged PRD won’t be read by your team members trust me
• Have conversations with your Team members, talk about other stuff asides work. If you can, make them your friends.
• Try as much as possible to always motivate the team, do this to the best of your abilities

Emmanuel Adindu:

Understanding each member’s strength goes a long way in delivering or fast shipping of product or feature. Every body on the team can’t deliver the way you expect or the way others are delivering, helping them understand their strength individually goes a long way.

I am currently writing an article on team’s strength using the chessboard as my reference; in the end the pawn can become the king if the team works together

After the discussion session, we had a question from a member of the community;

How do you work with a team whose thinking is different from yours (vision and mission) but this person end value is the( money) he wants at the end of the day instead of the vision and mission?
And of course money should be the drive.

I believe we all have a why, beyond working for money, there’s something that makes us glow different and beam brightly. think of it this way, if you woke up one morning and you had all your needs met and you had all the money you needed, scratch that, say all the money you want.

After all that, what will you do waking up every morning?

Your answer to that may have a little insight into what drives you, your purpose and belief. you see, the way it is for you is the way it is for that person, they have a why too, a purpose. and out of the risk of sounding like a motivational speaker, I would say they also have something that makes them beam. As a product lead, it is your responsibility to help your team link their personal vision, that is “their why” to the product vision.

My why and what i seek to do in all i do (including PdM) is “to simplify problems and create value so that I inspire fulfilment in myself and people.”

In all honesty tho, when you look at the Maslow’s hierarchy of need, purpose is way up in the pyramid, so sometimes hunger and sapa is just the problem 😂. Give them time if you have it.