The Homer Award, UK Law Edition

The Homer Award is for those organizations that manage to come up with a product that so fits their unique needs, it makes no sense for anyone else. And I am thrilled to award a very special Homer to the UK Government and their new digital regulations.

Let's start with the UK's upcoming ePrivacy laws. If you aren't already familiar with the changes there is a wonderful video that provides an overview. Give it a view, I'll wait.

Now that you're up to speed, let's talk more about why this is an epically bad idea. It's important to emphasis the statement that most of the content on the web is free as a result of targeted marketing. This is possible because that data is worth something to corporations with goods and services to sell. About $1200 per internet user according to The Atlantic. 

And that's where things get interesting with the UK's proposed solution. You are forcing those doing business in this new digital marketplace to make a choice, allow the audience to view your wares and content without the tradeoff of targeted marketing to pay for it or cut off access to those unwilling to participate in the marketplace. Less you think I exaggerate I present the following chart.

This chart presents the number of trackable visitors to the website of the ICO, the governing body behind the new regulations. The ICO added an opt in to their cookie tracking as an example for the rest of the market. I'll give you three guesses as to when they implemented this change and the first two don't count. Hint: It's right before the 90% drop off.

So now an internet user that was worth $1200 dollars will be worth $120 with no offsetting benefit in cost reduction or increase visitors. QuBit puts the hit to the UK economy at around $16 billion dollars. I think that's a bit on the high side but even a fraction of that in the midst of the UK's return to recession is a very dangerous bet.

Now, stupid alone does not a Homer Award earn. And digital privacy is a conversation worth having. Personally I most worry about the unnamed middlemen corporations that service banks and credit cards because I don't even know who they are. That's where the other side of the UK's digital strategy comes in. Recall the UK is the most surveilled nation in the west which may make one think it a bit ironic for them to be leading the way on draconian privacy protections.

And you'd be right.

At the same time as digital marketers are loosing access to customers the UK is pursing policies to record every message to or from their lands. A land that has a poor track record of protecting the private information of it's citizens.

And that, my friends, is well worth The Homer.

It Takes Two: The Product Needs The Customer

Detroit's Big 3 are riding a comeback in no small part thanks to a wave of quality small cars capable of delivering better margin. Small cars were the last holdout of the Big 3's quality issue, having never lost their mojo in trucks and making huge improvements in their family sedans over the past two decades.

But with small car the Big 3 found themselves in a Catch 22. Ford and GM had the products in Europe but in the US there wasn't enough margin for their bean counters to approve anything more than the basic value versions, and without their more appealing versions American consumers couldn't be convinced a small car was anything but poverty transport.

Then Lehman Brothers collapsed, the American manufactures reorganized, and gas prices soared. Economy found itself very desirable and Detroit had finally found away to deliver quality products to meet that desire.

Could one have happened without the other? Unlikely. Good products are pointless without good customers willing to pay for the distinction. And when that market exists, there's no competing without quality products which can take some time to develop, enough time that an organization can easily miss out.

A decent product manager can build a good product. A great product manager can recognize for whom to build a good product for.

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