How do you drive alignment across all parts of the organization?
GitLab Director of Product Management • July 26
Oftentimes as a Product leader, I am tasked with cross-functional work across Go-to-market, R&D, and finance. One of the most critical aspects of cross-functional is to drive clarity. This can be done by following three practices:
- Have a published single-source-of-truth charter where current status and archived information live. This repository can be a word document, google sheet, or even a static website. You will want to add "pins" to any relevant documents or links at the top for easy access.
- Determine a regular cadence for team syncs
- Provide continual async updates and link back to the SSOT (number 1) so people who are unable to attend syncs can reference the materials later
- Overcommunicate and overshare the goals and results of the cross-functional work
Point 4 is one to belabor. This overcommunication creates a sense of focus, collaboration, and clarity on purpose and intent. By using consistent communication, people feel like they understand how they can contribute and where they can support.
1057 Views
Amplitude Vice President, Product Management • July 7
There are obviously a bunch of goal setting / tracking frameworks that are designed to do this (for example OKRs) but I tend to start with where and why any misalignment exists - usually there are 4 levers, and they all come back to strategy:
- is the strategy clearly written?
- is the strategy broadcast regularly?
- is the strategy planned logically?
- is the strategy executed effortlessly?
1330 Views
Related Ask Me Anything Sessions
Adobe Senior Director of Product Management, 3D Category, Nicolas Liatti on Establishing Product Management
April 29 @ 10:00AM PST
Unity Director of Product Management, Laurent Gibert on Product Management KPI's
Cisco Director of Product Management, Yogesh Paliwal on Product Management KPI’s
Top Product Management Mentors
Tanguy Crusson
Atlassian Head of Product, Jira Product Discovery
Katherine Man
HubSpot Group Product Manager, CRM Platform
Lexi Lowe
Hex Head of Product
JJ Miclat
Zendesk Director of Product Management
Jesse Tremblay
HubSpot Director of Product
Victor Dronov
Atlassian Group Product Manager, Trello Enterprise
Reid Butler
Cisco Director of Product Management
Mike Flouton
GitLab VP, Product
Sacha Dawes
Flexera Vice President Of Product Management
Bryan Dunn
Nextiva Head of Product, Developer Ecosystem and Experience Cloud
Related Questions
How do you define the proper KPIs for your specific product and product team?How do you ensure alignment when you have two senior executive stakeholders who disagree with each other on the proposed strategy and you are stuck in the middle?How do you manage multiple stakeholders and how do you prioritize them?How does product management differ between a small and large company?What kinds of ongoing, cross-functional meetings do you think are important to have? Which teams are involved, and what agenda items do you recommend?What are some of the *worst* KPIs for Product Managers to commit to achieving?