A Network Approach to Gloabl Product Management

Having worked in a product-based multinational company from the united states and from india, i have come to experience first-hand the practicalities of the globalization process. in many ways, it’s like a long-distance relationship : you have to keep nurturing it, else it falls apart before you know it. here are a few thoughts to consider -

1. It’s a network: recognize that globalization isn’t just a means to ‘go where the talent is’, or ‘where the customers are’. it’s about decentralizing the organization such that the teams form a network of interdependent parts, rather than hub-and-spoke setup. true global organizations recognize that the animal must have multiple heads connected to a body, and not multiple tentacles connected to a head.

2. Leading with competency: each of the org units must have a clear charter of competency. setting up an office for sustained performance and results is hinged upon what that office is expected to deliver on a sustained long-term basis. it is something that feeds the growth of the organization, guides the day-to-day decisions, and motivates folks on a consistent basis. if you don’t define competency for each office, it’s merely a network of hired guns with no higher purpose. always ask this question of each org unit – “why do you exist?”. if the answer is more than 2 sentences, you probably don’t have it right.

3. Build mutual trust: the network of organizational nodes must understand that the success of the whole depends on the success of each of the nodes in the network. each unit must trust that every other unit will deliver on their end with quality and timeliness that they can trust. build the team to deliver on a meaningful and mission-critical charter, and let them go. you will see amazing results provided you have selected the team carefully.

4. The safe route trap: the safe-route mentality is a big trap that must be avoided. companies find it hard to transition from a centralized model to a decentralized model, mainly because it requires some level of risk. it requires reshuffling and re-factoring of organizational alignments and a big bet on an unknown. companies end up taking the safe route of offshoring unimpactful things ‘just to test out how it could work’ or to ensure no major shake-ups are needed. thus starts the downward spiral of mediocre expectations leading to mediocre performance. it’s a self-fulfilling cycle – mediocre expectations attract mediocre talent which under performs, leading to even lower expectations.

5. Travel: like any long-distance relationship, frequent travel and face-time is critical to establishing a person-to-person working relationship. for instance, same words have different meaning if they come from someone you know rather than from someone you’ve never met, simple as that. people often kickoff a transition using a week-long ‘transfer-of-information’ sessions and expect that henceforth, everything would be nice-and-dandy. during the transition period, people often attach certain metal picture and adjectives to each other (e.g. ‘he is talkative’ or ’she is a geek’), and those tags last far longer after the memory of the person has faded. there starts the trouble, when the pre-determined adjectives drive one’s picture of the other. as such, in an interdependent organization, frequent renewal of the working relationship is extremely crucial.

6. Burnout: for coordinated projects across continents, people do burn-out taking night time calls. most of personal lives unfold in the evenings, and the rhythm of life is seriously disrupted even at two nights a week. it’s worse if some of the folks on the call are at a significantly higher level of discomfort than others – they simply don’t share the sense of urgency to keep the calls to-the-point. these calls are unavoidable, so it’s important to have a structure for maximizing the productivity.

7. Asynchronous communication: set up proper message boards, intranets, doc shares, workspaces, or whatever makes the asynchronous communication a bit easier. invest in documenting everything *before* the plans are executed.

8. Establish redundency: have a good bench strength. have a farm system to develop the talent required to sustain the competency.

9. Dual echo chambers: the emails and words on phone don’t convey the difference between someone meaning ‘dude you are smoking something man’ from ‘i don’t think so’ from ‘i didn’t think so’. aside from that, the hallway conversations and sidebars in meetings amplify completely different parts of spectrum of signals that the business continuously emits, and those differences don’t come out until its too late. when they do, it’s in a charged up environment, to the detriment of the entire business.