AMA: Matterport Head of Product, Preethy Vaidyanathan on Influencing the C-Suite

Your primary role as a product manager is to ensure doing what is best for your products and customers. To manage conflict with stakeholders, try and listen to their point of view, what is important to each stakeholder and what they are trying to achieve. Understanding their goals will enable you to try and create a solution that becomes a win-win. For example, your sales team wants to launch a beta product to maximize in-quarter revenue but your Finance & Operations team wants the backend accounting workflow to be completed before launch; and this work will take 3 months. The question for you as the PM is to answer if the current product-readiness will win the customer and drive the business forward. If the answer is yes, then look at middle-ground solutions. For eg: in-quarter beta launch but sales can only sell to 'x' customers that Ops team will manually support before product builds the automation. Start with aligning on what is the best experience for your customers and driving product outcomes, understand stakeholder goals and determine solutions that address these in phases.

Working with data driven execs is in many ways easier - you present facts and get alignment based on data arguments. The challenge comes when trying to influence data driven execs when you dont have sufficient data yet. This can be various reasons why - it could be a product bet or early in the product maturity cycle. Data driven execs typically follow logical arguments. As a PM, when you dont have your data-case built yet, map out your top assumptions and show how your roadmap plan is going to address resolving each assumption. The other tip is to create explicit go/no-go decision points to ensure that the execs have confidence that as a PM, you are both optimizing for your product/project and overall company goals well.

Use your product launches as a way to communicate how you are solving customer problems and driving company outcomes. Most companies these days employ communication platforms like slack, intranet boards or other standardized channels. Leverage these channels to start with the why (customer, business problem) and the what (your solution launch). You can leverage simple product announcement templates or use tools to do a quick 2-min video recording to publish. Dont just stop with the launch announcement, follow-up with product results. Use things like 30-day adoption stats, customer success stories to show how as a PM, you are not just the product-expert but you are a product-leader that ties the feature to business results.

Early on, I worked in growth stage start-ups and typically worked closely with the c-suite team. My main feedback would be as PMs we see ourselves as product and technology experts. What I learnt is when you can tie that to customer and market problems, your interactions become even more powerful with the c-suite. This leads to opportunities like creating a new product line, solving a company OKRs because they see your skills as a company leader beyond a product lead.

Every interaction you have with your c-suite, set the context before jumping into content. A number of times 5-10mins into the meeting, the conversation derails into a completely different topic. That is because the c-suite may have a different priority in mind and your discussion is not addressing it. To avoid this, do the following at the beginning of every c-suite discussion: * Take the time to prepare a 2-3 mins intro at the start of every c-suite meeting. What is the meeting focus area, how does that align with the broader company goals and what is a successful outcome of the meeting * At the end of the summary and pause and ask for feedback If the feedback from c-suite is that they want to discuss a different topic, then you know at the beginning. This gives you the opportunity to offer the choice to end the meeting and come back so that it's productive use of everyone's time. Bonus tip: add the context and success criteria in the agenda of the meeting, so that audiences are prepared before your meeting starts and your summarization will be a re-confirmation of what they know you will cover.

Start with the customer and business problem you are trying to solve and get alignment on the priority to solving this problem. Oftentimes, the root cause of the disconnect is the timing on when to solve the problem. 1. Get alignment on the business impact for solving the problem (revenue, market share growth, geo-expansion, operational efficiency etc) 2. Get alignment that this is a priority to solve now. Don't proceed if this alignment is not achieved first. Spend the time to build the case and get alignment before you proceed 3. Once you have achieved both (the why and timing), then the resourcing ask will be what is needed to address the business objective If you spend the time building the case including why it needs to be solved now, then the resourcing request will be a much easier discussion.

IF YOUR COMPANY USES OBJECTIVE KEY RESULTS (OKRS) OR OTHER GOAL SETTING FRAMEWORK; THAT IS THE BEST GUIDE FOR A PM TO LEVERAGE. TIE YOUR PRODUCT/PROJECTS TO COMPANY PRIORITY AND USE THAT TO GUIDE WHAT ARE URGENT AND IMPORTANT TO PRIORITIZE. HOWEVER, THIS ALONE IS NOT GOING TO BE SUFFICIENT, AS NEW THINGS COULD EMERGE THAT YOU NEED TO RESPOND TO - A COMPETITOR ANNOUNCEMENT, CUSTOMER REQUEST, A NEW TECHNOLOGY UNLOCK ETC. YOU NEED TO HAVE A FRAMEWORK TO RESPOND. AS A PM, I WOULD ENCOURAGE YOU TO ALWAYS HAVE A RUNNING LIST OF YOUR PRIORITIES. WHEN SOMETHING COMES UP, THEN WITH YOUR MANAGER OR EXEC TEAM, HAVE AN OPEN DISCUSSION ON WHERE THIS NEW REQUEST FITS IN THE PRIORITY - DOES IT TAKE #1#1 OR #10#10 SPOT. ONCE EXPECTATIONS ARE ALIGNED, THEN IT'S EASIER FOR YOU AS PM TO CONTINUE TO STAY FOCUSED.

Your strength is being the leader in product and technology. Your superpower is connecting this to how they solve customer problems and drive business results. Top three things to consider: * Start with the why including customer problem and business goals * Understand company priority (this year, this quarter) and draw a connection between your product/project to the company priority. This will help re-iterate to your c-suite why they should pay attention and care * Create a demo. This can be prototype, slides on a powerpoint. Use this opportunity to storytell how the solution solves the customer problem. Visualizing has tremendous power to capture audience attention