On a recent sleepless night when my daughter was struggling with a high fever, I found myself silently willing her immune system to kick the nasty virus’ behind. And that’s when it occurred to me, that while she gets compliments for her intelligence and her bubbly personality, no one ever compliments her on her immune system. Even though a properly functioning immune system is a prerequisite for her to learn new skills and to maintain her happy, light-up-the-room demeanor.
The next morning (in my half-woken daze) my neurons started connecting my thoughts about my daughter’s immune system with thoughts about product management and innovation. I kept thinking about whether I, and product managers in general, worry enough about their organization’s hidden systems. Do we think about the systems that might be ‘boring’ when described on a PowerPoint slide but are critical to support risk-taking and learning i.e. innovation?
I should clarify a few things at this point, I do not believe that well-oiled systems and processes can, by themselves, ensure the long-term success of a product or company. We all know that existing paradigms can shift dramatically and an optimized, efficiently running system can become irrelevant almost overnight. Also, I want to re-emphasize my belief that product management is about the what and the why and not the how – I just want to posit that the what and the why of systems that are critical to the survival, evolution and success of the product are (or should be) the concern of product management.
When I went looking for some examples of companies that do the ‘boring’ things really, really well, I found a couple of familiar names.
Apple and its supply chain:
I’m pretty sure that inventory stats won’t ever make the cut for any of the slides at an Apple keynote address, but my hunch is that Apple’s ability to run the tightest manufacturing supply chain in the world makes a lot of the innovations on the eye-catching slides possible. According to a recent report from Gartner, Apple is still #1 at masterfully orchestrating it’s entire supply chain and ensuring that its products are never sitting around gathering dust. In reality, Apple products generate so much demand that their main problem is assembling and shipping products at breakneck speed (hopefully in humane conditions). However, if the unthinkable were to happen and one of their products fails to create demand, the company won’t need to bleed money and take write downs like some of its struggling competitors. This must give them the ability to recover quickly from missteps and keep innovating.
Facebook and its uptime obsession:
Admittedly, uptime alone never made someone’s web-based business a success – sometimes stating the obvious is necessary. However, it is almost criminal to waste away one’s hard fought product-market fit because of sloppy reliability. It’s now historical fact that Facebook’s leadership has had an uptime obsession since the very early days. Their expansion, which seems almost instantaneous in hindsight, was measured and underwritten by an ability to ensure reliable uptime for all the new and existing users. On the other hand, the fates of services that came before Facebook but did not pay much attention to mundane details like reliability were sealed pretty quickly. Facebook seemed to have understood early that earning trust comes before earning money – the important thing is to remember that at all times.
A distressingly large number of products fail in the marketplace – some businesses are able to learn from such failure and succeed while others disappear. My belief is that the businesses that prevail understand that innovation is 99% execution and that the resilience that powers risk-taking and creativity comes from focusing on the mundane yet critical details.
Buy, Use, Love 