Keep Your Eyes Open

Join Our Product Management Workshop!

If there's one workshop you attend this year -- this is it!
NEW

One of the most difficult things about being a product manager is that you’re confronted with every failure, real or imagined. If development falls behind schedule, they’ll (hopefully) come to you with the information. When an executive makes a promise to a large customer, you’ll be the one expected to deliver. If Sales signs a contract for custom development, it’s your roadmap that might need to be adjusted. Change is naturally frightening for most people, but it’s a constant in product management.


Ronald Reagan gave us a mantra for managing the rate of change:
“Don’t be afraid to see what you see.”


Remember that you are the bridge between your company and your market….and you won’t please everyone. Instead, search for facts to guide your decision.


When you’re worried or angry, it’s hard to think clearly. This is a fact of human existence; if you ignore your own emotions, they will still impact your thinking.
The first software product I worked on was a down-market play on mailing software, intended to help people manage their small contacts database and do one-off marketing. I had joined the team as an intern, and I was assigned to test this pre-release product.


I didn’t know anything about testing software, and there was no information about the intended usage or target market. The engineer on this product was a self-educated, intelligent, outspoken guy who I interacted with entirely by phone. I could relay many stories of the struggles we had getting along and agreeing about who would use the product and how. Let’s just say, we both learned a lot – and eventually, we reached those early milestones together. We launched the product, trained sales, and celebrated the product’s first revenue.


Unfortunately, both Word and WordPerfect were improving their functionality for managing contacts and doing mail merges – which left us with only one clear market advantage. We had the ability to check addresses and properly format them, since we were using a proprietary engine that was certified by the USPS to do this work – and we thought that was a very big deal.
As the months passed, and revenue continued to be low and spotty, we all had to accept the facts and stop throwing good money after bad. It was HARD to accept that our baby, this thing that we had nurtured and released despite our struggles, could not compete the way we had hoped.


Within a few years, I had moved into product management. I reflected on that experience, and often reminded myself to do the research first – and avoid building products that solved problems no one cared about. We needed to see the facts to guide that decision, but the most difficult part was calming our personal fear of failure so that we could accept the facts before us.


Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

Stacey Wber

Managing Partner
Education:

Stacey has deep experience in product management. After managing products and product management teams for 10 years, she joined Pragmatic Institute (formerly Pragmatic Marketing), teaching thousands of product management professionals the functional skills they needed to manage products in a profitable way. In 2018, she started her own company, Soaring Solutions, LLC, providing custom training development and delivery, coaching, and consulting for Product Management & Marketing teams. Stacey also collaborated to create the Quartz Open Framework, Product Growth Leaders, and Market-Driven Business.

Over these 25 years, Stacey repeatedly noticed that understanding the form and function of the job does not necessarily ensure success in product management. Product professionals also need to understand people — how to form authentic relationships quickly, even in a virtual world. They need to know how to connect and understand their teams and their markets, so they can inspire their companies, their teams, and their market’s buyers, users, and influencers. Stacey became a Managing Partner at CI2 Advisors because their Dynamic Relationship ModelTM will help close this gap, elevating the business outcomes and career trajectory of Product Managers and Product Marketing Managers. She’s excited to help you learn, practice, and apply these “soft skills” for greater alignment, productivity, profitability, and pleasure in your job.

The Cost of Miscommunication: Reflecting on its Impact and Opportunities for Improvement

Contact Us

Fields with an asterisk(*) are required.

Request a Meeting

John Geraci

Founder & Managing Partner
Education:

John had over 40 years of executive leadership before becoming the Founder and CEO of Ci2 Advisors. His prior experiences includes: President at Information Associates, President at BlessingWhite (now GP Strategies), Partner at The Complex Sale, Executive VP at Advent Software, and Managing Partner at Unlimited Connections Consulting. John has also served on the boards of companies like ASM International, TraderTools, and FolioDynamix, as well as being an Advisor to the CEO at SCRA.

When John reflects on his time in executive level leadership, he realizes that effective communication was the leading factor in determining success or failure for business objectives. As the world of work began to change, John knew that communication would be even more difficult to convey effectively, and being about to connect with, understand, and inspire customers would be harder to do than ever – that is why he founded Ci2 Advisors. His passion for this work stems from his belief that when customers feel heard and understood, amazing things can happen within your customer relationships and overall business performance.