As a PM, I feel as though I should own and manage the product. But Senior Leadership often comes to me with “we’ve promised this to a client so you have to build it”. There’s often little to no discovery of the benefit of building something beyond “client excitement in a meeting”. How do you handle these types of issues, especially when it’s CEO, VP, and Directors owning the roadmap and you are the executer?

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They are your superiors and their job is to tell you what to do, and to own a roadmap that is “higher up” and “higher priority” than your own. It is likely they are in the positions they are in because of their ability to manage larger scale, multi-facted needs. Their job is to consider the needs of the business, which take precedence over the roadmap you create in a vacuum. And your job is to listen to them 😉

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This was very triggering to read until the wink.

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I’ll be the pessimist here and say that unfortunately, at times you cannot change that; there are organizations like that, where the leadership dictates what you should build with their own data or lack of altogether. Some of these orgs may excel if those dictating product are visionaries; others end up doomed because they always try to satisfy a few big clients and lose the rest of their marketshare to competition...
If you present research and data indicating what should be pursued and why and none of it is heard consistently, you may need to either accept it or look for a place that would listen..

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“Ownership” is a slippery slope. I think the one things that you can truly own is making sure that the right decision was made.

When leadership hands down bad decisions, you need to go through the process to get the needed answers. Don’t tell them that they are making mistakes, but the more you go through the process, the more likely that you will gain the trust and they well involve you earlier on.

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Thanks! Agree on “ownership” and I’ll improve my phrasing on that in the future!

Unfortunately it seems to be a larger impact outside of myself. Many key players are not aware of why something is to be built. We go through the process, and see it fail time after time.

But I appreciate the reply!

Sounds like you haven’t done your job of influencing and managing up if your roadmap and ideas are that much better than theirs. Keep in mind they don’t have your perspective, AND you don’t have theirs. Do your part to bridge the gap.

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I posted in a different reply - but my issue is that leadership is driven by innovative ideas that lack success. They DO have my perspective, because I document out research, business cases, financial impacts. But you’re correct that I do not have THEIR perspective. When questions are asked to them, responses lead to assume that they don’t have the why but they have skipped to the what. My roadmap tends to have a balance of enhancement, maintenance, and new features. While theirs is new features and increase tech debt to deliver faster.

So when you say bridge the gap - can you provide more valuable feedback in how you would approach this? I often feel that it’s part of the politics of my company. We have monthly and quarterly meetings where I share KPIs, and I provide details to my roadmap decisions. What other steps should be taken?

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Are they willing to have the conversation with you about your ideas for the roadmap? Or is it more like, “stop asking questions, just build this feature we need”?

They are willing to have conversations - but the result is to build what they think is needed. My current woes are that they enforce things are built, it’s built and we don’t have any user adoption or usage (literally less than 5 people a month touched the new feature). Leadership doesn’t want the feedback; but they get another new idea and enforce it with similar results. And then I am managing a product riddled with unsuccessful launches that won’t be changed.

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Want to understand your concerns better.

I can imagine two major concerns in your situation. One is that it doesn’t sounds like you are expected to build and practice certain core PM skills as a PM at this company. What do job descriptions for PM hires look like. If you have a PM skills rubric that you’re assessed on, what does it look like?

Is it that:
- company has no clear idea of what PMs should do;
- company has an idea, but it doesn’t include the responsibilities you’re describing; or
- on paper, company expects PMs to be responsible for discovery and roadmap justification but in practice that gets circumvented?

Another concern I imagine you may have is the general success of the company. Is there a business plan and product strategy doc, do the things you’re being asked to execute on align with those or no?

Is it that:
- there is no plan/strategy (yet);
- there is, but you aren’t convinced; or
- there is, you’re convinced, but the roadmap doesn’t align?

In a client-serving organization, isn't the true client the Product Owner that's making the roadmapping and product definition decisions? And the design team is conducting discovery in parallel in a Design Sprint? Does your firm have a design studio that you can partner with?

At the end of the day it is there decision as your superiors. I found that by telling them "yes, we can do it but it will impact x, y, and z", and asking a bunch of questions about the use case and the users, will show them that you are a team player and are aligned in there thinking of the business priorities as well as that you know how to do discovery and need to be pulled into those decisions earlier. Only then can you have the influence to really push back on those types of executive decisions.

Generally, in my experience, this happens to varying degrees at most companies.

It is up to the PM to influence up and across.

Don’t make this an “them vs me” thing. You will lose that battle every single time.

Instead, dig deeper into why they want what it is that they want. And then use the right methods to influence them otherwise.

If they are data oriented, then show them the data (forward looking data, don’t rehash past stuff that did not work).

If they are more influenced by social pressure (e.g. if they will change their mind if someone they respect is saying so), then work on influencing their social network.

Fortunately or unfortunately, this comes with the territory. You have to learn to deal with it.

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