The Big MVT: Subaru BRZ vs. Toyota 86

Testing is the oxygen of Product Managers. If you aren't testing, you're doing it wrong. But as anyone who has conducted a test knows, it's no easy feat making sure you are testing the things that need testing, and controlling the things that need controlling. The world is a messy place with a lot of moving parts. That's why I am interested in the coming arrival of the new joint sports car project from Toyota and Subaru. For the next couple of years these cars will be identical save the front and rear fascias and the badges. Every other aspect is controlled. So, giving a slight variance for style preference (and you really have to look hard to see the differences) the difference is the reputation of the manufacturer. Both groups have recently abandoned factory team efforts in significant series, Toyota from Formula 1 and Subaru from the World Rally Championship. Can either maintain enough performance cache to spark interest and sales? And what happens to resale value when Toyota's slipping reliability goes head to head with Subaru's legendary value retention? We're about to find out.

The Big Dream: Custom To Order

Time is hosting an editorial by Ron Bloom, a former White House staffer, that is downright Pollyannaish on the potential of the US car market. Whether you buy into his vision or not (increased electric power yes, US manufacturing jobs coming home not so much), and there's really something for everyone, I found one particular point that merits a closer look.

Finally, we will see dramatic changes in the way that we manufacture cars. Our production methods today are still largely based on the methods developed by Henry Ford, but we are fast moving to a world of customized, on-demand manufacturing where the consumer can build their car from the ground up, sending their plans directly to the factory floor for rapid assembly.

To be clear, I am a fan of this vision. I have long love affair with this vision. Yet I can't reconcile the timing involved. Consider the sequence.

1. The buyer will visit a site or similar input to place an order for a vehicle customized their taste. 
2. The manufacturing plant will receive the order and fire up the machines and people necessary to put it all together. 
3. The finished product will be shipped to the buyer's location. 

Let's look into each of these steps.

1. How will the buyer conduct their shopping prior to purchase, will the manufacturer be expected to create a sample line and ship them out and wait? 
2. Since people, energy and materials are expensive how are the manufactures going to muster and apply these force efficiently without stretches of expensive downtime?
3. What will it cost to deliver a one off vehicle to a third tier rural dealer and how long is the buyer willing to wait for delivery?

Timing is usually an issue of sacrifice and compromise within the product triangle of speed, price, and reliability. How close can you get to the user's assumed timeline? Where your system diverges, compromise. 

That's not to say this isn't a model that could work in the right conditions, very large or exotic jobs where getting it right justifies the margins that make customization a legitimate value. Porsche has been running a successful made-to-order program for some time. Could it be executed as a general sale process? Certainly not. 

How To Use The Steering Wheel, What Product Gets Wrong About Hiring

Say you wanted to hire a driver for your new race team, and for the sake of argument let's say you're not Ferrari who can have any driver they want. What would you ask them? Would you point out you need someone with extensive experience in the use of modern steering wheels? How about a track record of increasing gear shifting responsibilities?

No, you'd take what you know of their history, find out what they want from your team, and determine if this driver is the kind of fit that the entire organization and coalesce around. Since the skill sets are roughly the same, it's the ephemeral stuff that makes the difference. The intangibles such as trust, cohesion, preparation, and adjustment are the elements that can push a team to outperform the sum of their resources.

Now let's look at our Product Management world. How do we go about seeking and hiring that individual that leverage those intangibles? Should we list all the basic skills involved like effective written communication, knowledge of Agile methodologies, or the ever popular history of increased responsibilities within an organization? Does this tell us more about a candidate then a general competency?

A list of skills may be useful, but every driver on the freeway can apply the basic skills of driving, and any amateur racer has a performance record of some kind. In Product Management competency is not enough. The Product world needs to stop posting positions with the same generic template of skills and start talking about what makes their organization unique. What is the culture? What are the goals? Provide an illustration of not only what success looks like but what the organization believes are the steps to get there.

Millions are capable of driving to work each morning, but only 33 can start the Indy 500. Search wisely.

Tata's Nano Finds The Commodity Floor

Readers of this blog may have noticed I have a thing against turning products into commodities. Commodification is a race to the bottom that leave the suppliers in charge and loss leaders in the driver seat. 

So it's with some relief to read this article on the disappointing sales of the Tata Nano. Now, I have nothing against the concept, in fact I find the goal of getting entire families off a rickety scooter and into something with doors and a roof to be a noble pursuit. Now if they can stop the bursting into flames bit. 

Here's the crux of the matter.

But the biggest blunder made by a company with as much experience with Indian consumers as any may well have been the most elementary, and confounding: the hype about the Nano's low cost ended up making it less attractive to its target audience -- people seeking to climb a rung up the social ladder from two wheels to four. "In communications, it's gone out as the world's cheapest car," says Hormazd Sorabjee, the Mumbai-based editor of Autocar India. "There's a kind of stigma attached to it, as though you can't afford anything else."

So what we've learned is that some products are aspirational to the core. The car, with it's aura of freedom and it's empowerment of movement, is just such a product. Product folks can push particular products below the acceptable floor, try to turn them into appliances, but the customers demand more, and you will be punished.

Time Segment Update: Time-Speed-Distance Rally

So far, an overly packed schedule has left my time segment experiment looking less like Le Mans and more like a time-speed-distance rally in a 1913 Stutz Bearcat. Planning meetings and my old nemesis the inbox have left me with little time. As a result, the few spare moments I have had be carefully metered and measured. The goal has been not to win, but to stay on pace and make it through to the next week.

This may all come out for the good, but for the moment puttering down the road has been painfully inhibiting.

Photo GreatRace.com

An Experiment With Sector Times In The Work Day

"So should I prioritize your new item above my A1 priorities, my A1er priorities, or my A1est priorities?"  --me, circa 2006

The biggest obstacle a Product Manager faces in the workday is that everything is important all the time. Email, presentations, and projects all fight for your attention at every minute. And while it's been said that a good Product Manager is disciplined, it's difficult fulfill when every hour is crowed from above and below with voices demanding your attention. What most often gets sacrificed is the very stuff that makes Product Management great; pursuing the long view and making the connections no one else sees. These things take time, contemplation, and research and are eroded by the tactical demands of everyone's request.

Of late this has been a struggle for me. I am becoming an inbox zombie, responding to the query of the moment only to have it spawn three additional queries. But how to climb out of this pit?

Not surprisingly, I plan to take a page out of racing to keep myself moving forward. Long ago race teams developed the idea of segments, dividing the track up into sections that are individually timed, to better understand where a car is gaining or losing time. Since then, the organizing bodies themselves have taken up the concept and provide timing data by individual segment. More fun, they color code the segments in their timing and scoring UI providing us with the accidentally hilarious when out of context exclamation, "He's just gone purple in sector two!"

In my application, my plan is to divide the day into three segments that correspond to the work I want to get done balanced with the demands of the work that wants attention. And I'll be providing a running account of this experiment her on Rolling Product. My hypothesis is that while I won't solve the problem, I will pick up efficiencies and gain insight as to the unplanned items (and people) that are most time consuming.  I suspect this will be more 24 hours of Le Mans than Formula 1, with a constant ebb and flow of clear segments and segments chocked full of slow traffic.

And at times I suspect it may be more 24 hours of Lemons, with the work equivalent of being called into the pits to have a steel pig statue welded to my roof. Stay tuned.

Mediocre Triumphs, Why Some Customers Just Don't care

You know that product you're working on. The one you're pouring your heart and soul into. Quick question, are you sure anyone cares?

Dan Neil's take on the Lexus CT200h is an excellent reminder of some hard lessons we PdMs should keep in mind.

A certain segment of the population wouldn't know a mediocre car if it fell on them. For these buyers, the CT200h comes hurtling toward their heads from a great height.

Look, I don't want to sound superior or difficult to please. I'm not a great connoisseur of wine, for example, so you could serve me Three-Buck Chuck or the muddy runoff from a boarding kennel and I wouldn't notice anything amiss. As hard as it is for car enthusiasts to believe, many consumers just aren't capable of, or interested in, discerning the nuances between cars. They've got lives to lead. You say CT200h gets 42 mpg and costs $35,000 fully loaded? And it's a Lexus? Wrap it up. I'll take it.

This is why, infuriating as it is to the oil in the veins segment, car companies are not run by car guys/gals. It's too easy to get bogged down in the technical details, to sacrifice comfort or ride for a couple more tenths of the 0-60. It's too easy to forget that the primary purpose is to get your customer from point A to point B.

Don't get me wrong, there are niches where such details are critical. But we're talking about just that, niches. The mainstream have their own interests in play. So build with passion, just make sure that passion is for the story of your product and not the shiny bits hidden inside.