August Is Almost History…Recharge Time

I’m really not sure where August has gone. I knew it was going to be busy with people still out on vacation and being quarter-end, but it seriously flew by.

A lot of my time was spent making sure a renewed partnership with a vendor was being implemented properly. A lot of back and forth with different departments, making sure everbody was on the same page – both within our company and within the walls of our vendor partner.

With this project, I:

• sold the top executives on the plan (with some help and coaching of course) both at our company and the vendor’s
• worked with the purchasing team making sure they understood the whole scope of the initiative
• made sure sales were aware of what we were doing (after all, it is sales that will ultimately make the whole project a success
• co-ordinated contact between our teams and corresponding teams at the partner, again, to make sure everyone was together on this

The hard work co-ordinating all this is already paying off…leads are flowing in to sales and when the first portion of inventory finally hit the warehouse (today, in fact) I’m happy to say that just about half of it is already pre-sold! A lot of late nights from home tying up loose ends has made this all run smoothly and contributed to its success (not only on my part, but on all the teams involved – and if any of them read this blog, if I haven’t already done so, thank you).

Now my goal is to take and build on the initial success. This is just a start, and everyone that has been a part of this is excited – you can sense it when talking to them!

I am taking a week with the family to head up north a bit and do some camping – I am looking forward to the time off. Usually when I’m off I’m worrying about what’s going on back at the office, but with the teams we have in place now, I can actually relax and recharge, knowing that they are all focused on the same thing – making our division the biggest success in the company.

Of course, when I’m back on the 28th, it’ll be the final sprint to our quarter-end…fun!

Homework Handed In

Well, another month in the books…a lot of positives taken out of July. Backlog is good, and some big wins are coming in from all areas of the business. August is already starting out very positive.

Earlier, I posted on a homework assignment that our boss gave us asking us that if there was one thing we could change that would positively affect our business, what would it be?

Our team discussed this throughout the week in some email exchanges, and we came up with some good ideas. The discussion definitely went longer than intended, but it was a good forum of ideas…following is a list of the highlights that generated most of the discussion:

• Sign back a very large vendor we used to have
• Better communication with purchasing teams
• Getting our support staff more familiar with our technologies and products (buyers, marketing, etc…not tech support)
• Better system tools for sales

These are just a few of the ideas presented; others were mentioned that were great. I liked the format of the whole project. If we’d just been asked point-blank to come up with these thoughts, I doubt that it would have been as successful.

What I really took from this, though, is that as Product Managers, we always have to be thinking about change, and how change can help us succeed. A lot of people are hesitant to accept change, and those are the ones that fail. I appreciate the fact that I am part of a company that encourages – no – rewards people who embrace change. I look back at how I resisted all the changes a couple years ago, and how my views have changed to support good change.

I’ll end with a link to our CEO’s blog since his post today fits perfectly…