Embracing the Ownership Mindset

“I don’t make those decisions. I’m told what we need to deliver.”

As I’ve been coaching many different product management teams over the last year, it’s still surprising how many product folks feel like the direction of their product and the ability to spend time following best practices is out of their control. It’s clearly frustrating for them. 

We’ve all been there – feeling like waiters.  Taking orders without feeling the ability to push back. That’s a tough place to be, as it makes it hard to do the right thing for customers. Sometimes we don’t even realize it’s happening, but understanding when it is and how we can overcome it is critical to making the leap from good to great in product.  

Early on in my PM career, I was working for a fantastic guy at Intuit. He was like the fun uncle that always had a joke and looked out for you in every way possible. As a former technologist, he was really forward thinking. One day, he came to me with an opportunity to develop a new product that would revolutionize how accountants could collaborate with their QuickBooks clients, leveraging the Internet (this was back in the days of desktop software, pre-dot com bust). I was thrilled that he put his trust in me, and this would be my first brand new product launch. He had this great vision, and I wanted to make it a reality.  

We partnered with an outside technology firm to build the product. The partner had developed a platform that had much of the core functionality we needed, so my boss challenged me to launch within 9 months. We did succeed in launching it on schedule, but unfortunately, the product itself was a miss. 

The core concept of enabling accountants and their clients to collaborate on QuickBooks desktop files over the Web was powerful (and ultimately successful years later). At that point in the evolution of the internet, however, our clients didn’t have enough bandwidth to make the file exchange go smoothly. And there were extraneous features that came with the platform that were prominent in the user interface but didn’t add real value.   

What went wrong? Well, let me focus on my part: I didn’t take enough ownership over the success of the product itself. I saw red flags and raised questions, but I was caught up in the organizational momentum to get the product out. I was good at executing, too good in a way… or too focused on driving forward.  I allowed myself to be driven by the launch goal and coached through my concerns vs. doing the work to test the issues in the market. For example, what rapid experiments could I have run to determine if our assumptions were right? 

At its core, the role of a product manager is to deeply understand customers, advocate for them, and drive great experiences in a way that delivers desired business outcomes. It is not a role where one can be successful by waiting for others to take the lead or being hesitant when there are issues that need to be resolved. We think about what’s best for the business and the customer and do what’s right, balancing their needs and the business. We may not always be the one making the decisions surrounding our product, but once we are assigned that product, we need to see ourselves as the owner. Even if we aren’t the ones who set the vision or the launch goal, we own the outcomes. That is the ownership mindset. 

In this article, we’ll shed light on how to know if a mindset shift is needed and how to develop and embrace an ownership mindset. 

The Power of an Ownership Mindset

The ownership mindset is a powerful philosophy that empowers us to take ownership of product outcomes. When we internalize this mindset, we transform from mere executors of tasks to strategic drivers of our products’ success. All great PMs embody qualities such as initiative, accountability, and a proactive approach to problem-solving – but that’s not enough by itself, we also fill the gaps where we see them to achieve those outcomes. 

When a Mindset Shift Is Needed 

Let’s explore some of the signs when an ownership mindset might be missing. For example, have you ever said statements like these or felt like this was your situation? 

• “We get our requirements from our stakeholders.” 
• “That decision gets made above my head.” 
• “I don’t have that kind of role. I’m told what we need to deliver.” 
• “We don’t have the time or the freedom” [to follow best practices.] 
• “There is no documented strategy so it’s difficult to prioritize.”

Those statements are often accompanied by these situations:  

• No clear strategy exists making it difficult to set and stick to clear priorities, and feeling like it’s someone’s role above you to set strategy.
• Data calls for a change in direction, but feeling like leadership has already decided on a path and you don’t feel it’s your place to change it.  
• Rationale for a decision isn’t clear, but feeling like there’s no room to understand it and to help your team understand it. Or time to share your perspective with data if the decision seems like a poor direction.  
• Feature decisions are being made by leadership without considering customer feedback or other angles, but feeling like you can’t slow the process down to infuse additional insights. 

Developing an Ownership Mindset

Resolving any of the situations above requires a mindset shift.  Regardless of whether the organization we live in fosters ownership at all levels, it’s up to us as product managers to embrace it. Here are some perspectives that we see as critical to enabling your ownership mindset.

1, Sit in the CEO’s shoes.  Think like your CEO (or those a few levels above you) and continuously consider: “What’s the right thing for the business in this situation?” Regardless of whether his or her priorities are clear, or whether you’ve ever spoken to your CEO, you can apply this thinking; you can prioritize the company over the project. “If I was the CEO, what would I do to ensure the best possible business outcome?” This can lead to a change in how you approach your job in every way. 

For example, if you’re working in a role without a clear strategy, it’s difficult to make the right product tradeoffs as there’s nothing driving what fits. It can start to look like everything fits. If you sit in the CEO’s shoes, you know that your team needs to spend time on those things that will deliver on established business goals and objectives based on the customer and market data with which you are intimate. You can proactively put a stake in the ground at a working strategy and work with your leaders to get alignment. This is much different than the perspective that “I’m not the leader here, so I’m just going to try to optimize the backlog where I can.”

2. Think End to End   Similar to the CEO perspective, this is about thinking beyond the product we are on and stepping into the shoes of our stakeholders, both internal and external. When we do this, our actions often change  because we broaden our view and see things differently. For customers, we think more about the context in which they live: What happens before and after using our product or the feature we are working on? We not only think about the set-up and support experience for customers, but we consider the internal stakeholders who may be involved. 

For example, if you have a new product idea, thinking “end-to-end” means that you talk to sales, customer experience, operations and others to understand the implications of the new idea. What you learn guides you to develop the hypotheses you need to test – or costs and impacts you need to consider. With an ownership mindset, you think about the broader considerations that will drive the right outcomes and ensure the resolution of any issues or challenges that arrive.   

3. Start with Curiosity Over Acceptance (or Rejection).  When confronted with new information, ideas or decisions, cultivate curiosity and develop the habit of questioning before forming an opinion.   

We are often handed new ideas, some of which we don’t feel fit into the direction the product should take. But, often, we don’t feel confident or that it’s our place to speak up.  So it gets added to the backlog. Our perception is that it’s wrong, but are we right? Having an ownership mindset means that we always look to facilitate the dialogue that will result in the right business outcome. We do this through curiosity. 

For example, instead of passively accepting decisions, inquire to gain a deeper understanding of the rationale. Let’s say your leader adds a new item to the roadmap in your next planning session. In response, ask, “What is the problem we are solving?” “Do we understand the root cause?”  and “Can you help me understand why  this is the right time to solve it?” This keeps the discussion focused on the problem and business outcomes vs. the merits or details of a particular feature.  Then you can say “That’s an interesting problem. Can we test and learn more about this problem to make sure we understand it?” and “I’ll come back to you with some ideas around the best ways to solve it and what we could trade off to make it happen.” 

Then give it some more thought, letting your CEO and end-to-end perspectives kick in. Test the hypotheses, review the data, discuss with your stakeholders, then share your findings with your leader. In some cases, you may only be able to spend an hour in a thought exercise with the data and people you know.  In other cases it could mean doing several interviews to get some directional insights.  This isn’t meant to be a multi-week, costly discovery event but more of an insight driven gut check.   And In your follow up discussion, continue to practice curiosity and get your leader’s perspective on what you found and the potential tradeoffs you must make. 

Keep in mind this doesn’t mean that you don’t have your own point of view, it just means that you stay open and curious to allow for better discussions. It also avoids immediate backlog accommodations, and enables you to maintain the right path to the desired business outcomes. 

Putting an Ownership Mindset into Action

When we have a broader perspective and embrace an ownership mindset, we start to approach our role as a product manager differently. We see the role of product manager as a leadership role, regardless of where we sit in the organization or whether we have direct reports, we are facilitating the right decisions and actions for the business and customer.  We start to exhibit behaviors such as: 

• Seeking “line of sight” when we don’t have it. In other words, making sure that there’s a connection between what our team is solving for and the broader company objectives. 
• Seeking to win hearts and minds across your stakeholders to do the things that have the highest business impact vs. just executing on stated project milestones. Working to influence others with data as your ally. When decisions don’t seem to be the right thing for customers or the business, we gather the data that’s needed and drive the discussions that lead to better outcomes. 
• Facilitating transparency and resolution to decisions and risks that may or may not be within our role to solve.  Rather than allowing a project to continue gaining momentum when there is uncertainty, we raise our hand and say, “Let’s address this problem before we move forward.”

 

Author: Steve Cook Date Published: 7/13/2023

Product Rebels is a product management training and coaching firm run by long-term product executives for companies like Intuit and Mitchell International. We have coached over 200 companies, small and enterprise level, in the skills and frameworks that help product management leaders and product managers deliver kick-ass customer experiences. We have a passion for finding efficient ways of infusing customer insight into everything product teams do in pursuit of experiences that customers love …and that drive growth.  Contact us if you’d like an assessment of your PM teams strengths and areas of opportunities or if you want to bolster product management best practices that are proven to drive growth.   Join us in the Product Rebels Community on Facebook or the Product Rebels Community on LinkedIn.