An Overview of the Work of a Business Manager in a Product-Driven Business
I am Yanagawa, an executive officer at BASE, Inc. I serve as the business manager for our financial business.
My career path has been Engineer → PdM → Business Manager.
Currently, I serve as a business manager while holding responsibility for business strategy, product strategy, and organizational strategy.
I have created a new diagram that captures the overall view of a product-driven business. I would like to talk about it because I believe this diagram can put an end to the Product vs. Business debate.
There is also a sister article, so please be sure to read it. Since the previous article intentionally focused on finance, I have intentionally excluded finance this time. I hope to fuse them well someday.
And, the article that should have been written before this event was actually this one.
Why does the Product vs. Business debate occur?
This is what I want to say most of all!
The reason the Product vs. Business debate occurs is thatwhat people mean by 'business' differs from person to person.
When you say 'business,' what comes to mind? I suspect many people think of reach methods like sales and marketing.
I believe that business in the true sense means thinking about business schemes—that is, thinking about business strategy.
Reach methods like sales and marketing fall under the scope of product strategy. Furthermore, the strategy phase consists only of business strategy; everything else is the execution phase.
Let me rephrase this using intentionally crude and potentially misleading expressions.
If you compare a product with reach strategies like sales and marketing, the product is more important.
If you compare a product with the formulation of business strategy, the formulation of business strategy is more important.
I believe the diagram I invented can explain that business strategy and reach strategy are similar but different things.
The scope I want a PdM to take responsibility for
I want you to grasp the whole picture that branches out from product strategy.
In my understanding, sales and marketing are within the scope of the product.
I don't want you to be satisfied with just defining product requirements and developing the product, and I think it would be good to have a sense that it is unnatural to leave out reach strategy and operational strategy when thinking about product strategy.
And within this scope, I think it is good to take a stance and build things with user value as the subject.
However, what I absolutely do not want you to misunderstand is that the responsibility for this scope does not naturally come with the job title of PdM. You should have it, but I think there are many cases where you don't.
The scope I want true business talent to take responsibility for
I want you to grasp the entire scope that connects directly from business strategy.
You should control everything from establishing business strategy and formulating business plans to managing budget vs. actuals and achieving them.
There are patterns where the business manager handles this part, and there are also cases where departments like corporate planning or business planning handle it. I want people called BizDev to go after this.
As for how to build skills around business strategy,please go through the cycle of writing and achieving a business plan about three times.I think you will finally get a feel for it then.
You might feel that writing a business plan is difficult, but I want you to try writing one first.
Writing a business plan is about how to break down KPIs. It is interesting that there is no single correct answer for how to break down numbers. It differs depending on the phase and philosophy. A business unit drawing up a plan is like creating management accounting. How do you break it down to understand the business? Based on that, how do you use this plan to create momentum in the team? Clarifying where the bottlenecks are and creating momentum. That is what writing a business plan means.
It is by no means intended for predicting the future or guessing.
And within this scope, I think it is good to intentionally take a stance and build things from the perspective of the numbers.
It is important to clash them together
User value and numbers. They will absolutely intersect.
However, mixing them halfway is dangerous. It will end up being half-baked.It is important to intentionally take a stance and then clash them togetherIt is.
One person can also do this by switching between different personas. As a business manager, I have always done this to make decisions.
But I also think it is best to take a stance for each role, come up with ideas, and then clash them together.
Thinking in extremes is quite difficult, and switching personas takes energy.
I think there are various patterns for how to proceed. Recently, I have been trying a style where I have each person take a stance for their role, and then I make the final decision while facilitating.
Since it is pointless to have a real fight, it is important to declare a role-play, saying, 'I am intentionally taking this stance, so it is intentional!'
There is no absolute correct answer, but it is important to have a consensus that we must proceed by setting priorities. There is no absolute right way to think about it.
What about talent strategy?
Talent strategy is something that only comes into view once the business and product have launched and stabilized. Furthermore, it has a longer time horizon compared to the business and product cycles.
Especially regarding development and cultural initiatives, I feel as a business manager that they are, in a sense, luxury items.
Since these are initiatives for many people, the ROI does not make sense unless the organization grows.
While the organization is small, it is better to do honest, individual communication, and in many cases, it is better to solve problems before communicating them.
The experience accumulated in that process will be useful when formulating cultural initiatives later! Let's grow the business to a stage where you can safely implement cultural initiatives.
Please remember that while talent strategy is one of the core pillars of important strategy, it is often the case that you will only become conscious of it after the phase has progressed and your position has risen.
The Primacy of Business Strategy
This chapter is super important.
Basically, I think it is healthy for daily PDCA cycles to revolve around product strategy. When operating a product-driven business, I think there are many times when PDCA cycles actually revolve around product strategy.
However, in a company, numbers are important. What does it mean that numbers are important? A company makes promises about numbers and gains trust by achieving them. If you connect that trust, it leads to raising capital. And the more capital from many people enters, the more the company carries the expectation of continuing to grow beyond a certain point within the context of capitalism.
If that is the case, naturally, product strategy is influenced by business plans and budget management. Product development is also influenced by the 'insertion' of tasks resulting from missing short-term plans. This is unavoidable. If you intentionally prioritize, business strategy takes precedence over everything.
Do you think this is a negative thing? In my opinion, it is surprisingly not the case.
Product improvement based on user value is difficult and often leads to dead ends.
Compared to that, numbers are simple and easy to understand. They represent objective facts of the current situation, and they can sometimes present simple bottlenecks. So, while it can be annoying when numbers are inserted while you are thinking with a product mindset, there are also many times when it makes you realize something.
There is a dynamism born from going back and forth between user value and numbers.
The width of this swing is important.
I myself sometimes come to my senses and realize I was overthinking things while switching between my product hat and my business hat.
From this experience, I believe that you cannot create a great business or a great product with just one or the other.
How you use your brain changes depending on whether you think from numbers or user value
Product and business are connected, so they are the same! Do it all!is my basic stance.
However, as I use the expression of wearing different hats, the way you use your brain changes depending on whether you think from numbers or user value, so the output you get also changes.
Even if the direction of the goal is the same, the output changes, so combining ideas from both sides expands the range. And this text proceeds with the stance that expanding the range is a good thing.
I have been talking about how both stories from numbers and stories from users are necessary. There are parts you won't understand unless you do both, so it is better to try both.You need to know both in order to intentionally take a stance.Because taking a stance when you only know one side is not 'intentional' at all. It is simply that you can only do one side.
If you can only do one side, you need someone to balance it for you. It means you need to be managed. That might not be a bad thing, but isn't it frustrating? It feels like you are not completing it on your own.
As some of you may have noticed, product and engineering are similar. Dynamism is born from intentionally taking a stance.
What is the scope of a business manager's job?
The business manager's job is everything in this diagram.
That said, you cannot perfectly handle everything by yourself. Depending on the phase, there may be things you are not doing, and there may be things you have delegated.
It is impossible to handle everything perfectly unless a day has 72 hours. There will also be areas you are good at and areas you are not.
However, in order to advance and improve the business, you need to understand, grasp, and control this overall view.
Even if it takes time, I want to accumulate the experience of covering everything.
How I expanded my work to become a business manager
How do you expand your work within the overall picture? Honestly, it's a case-by-case basis, but I'll write about my pattern as one example!
Please compare it with how you expand your own work and leave a comment.
In my case, since there was no one else with the capability, I gradually expanded my scope by becoming able to do things as the product grew, so I'm not very good at talking about power struggles or how to seize roles.
Conversely, I do have strong opinions on how to proactively expand your role when there is no one else who has done it before and how to hand over roles you have mastered.
You might think, do you master things one by one from the top down? But the reality is that I did it quite from the bottom up.
Although I often sound like I know everything, I built this up from a point where I couldn't do anything at all, and it took a tremendous amount of time.
I was an engineer who crossed over into requirements definition relatively often, but for about the first four years after entering the workforce, this was my scope.
At this point, I considered myself a junior PdM.
I was desperate just to keep this scope running for about three years.
It was tough because it didn't feel as tangible as product development.
I started calling myself a business manager when I began writing these, but looking back, that was premature.
It took about three years from starting by imitation to feeling like I could do it a little bit.
I'm still in training here, and it's difficult.
It only connects once you can do both the side that generates revenue and the side that spends the budget.
I'm still in training here as well.
All in all, I think it took about two years to transition to strategy.
It took about five years from becoming a PdM to transitioning to something like business strategy.
I think I can only truly call myself a business manager once I can do this much.
I'm still in training here as well.
This is a part you cannot experience unless the product or business grows.
The key is that you cannot create a strategy without the accumulation of experience and tangible results from execution; it's impossible to create a strategy from the start!
You probably think I wrote this quite lightly. I wrote about the specific details of how to actually proceed with this part separately!
You might wonder why it's a paid article, or why it's not a paid note article, but it's because I was asked to do it on Coconala Content Market.
At what timing and what kind of support is needed to develop business managers?
I want to write about this theme too, but it will be long, so I will omit it this time. If anyone is interested, I will write a note or lecture you directly, so please let me know.
Summary
Did I convey the overall picture of a business manager's work in a product-driven business?
As a result, was I able to put an end to the overall picture of a business manager's work? The Product vs. Business debate. I think I was able to organize it.
When it was PdM vs. BizDev, I was frustrated that I could only give the easy answer, 'In the end, it's not about the role, it's about whether the individual can do the job,' so I kept thinking about it. In fact, I'm still thinking about it.
I feel like I was able to bring it down to some concrete talk, but what do you think?
I'm waiting for your feedback.