7.1: Real-Life Emotionally Charged Scenarios

The Scenario

Many years ago, I joined a company to take on the role of managing the marketing of a product line. I found out that one of my direct reports, a product manager, was an emotionally charged person with a track record of upsetting people in all the day-to-day interactions. Because of his anger issues, most people did not want to work with him. The person was already placed on the "must shape up" path by Human Resources, but I was not aware of it. He was technically very competent. Hence, he was driving the release of a critical product. After talking to the engineering team and the affected person, I concluded that if I did not get involved in the planning meetings, the release would be delayed.

The product manager's emotional issues led to:

Crossing the boundary between marketing and engineering.

1. Angry, verbal disagreements with the engineering team.
2. Delay in product development.

Next Steps

The affected product manager was a passionate worker, but it was the anger and complete lack of people skills that ruined every product planning meeting and killed relationships. The product manager was also frustrated with the engineering team for not acting on the requirements he had provided, which included implementation details. Those details clearly crossed the boundary between marketing and engineering. I realized that if I didn't get actively involved in the planning meetings, it would not only delay the product but also impact the product line roll-out. Engineering preferred that I get involved too. While micromanagement has never been a part of my management tactics, I had no other choice. Offering to help the product manager gain engineering's support, I became an active member of the team. to participate and implement the product requirements. I did that using a collaborative model where the product manager and I will form a two-person tag team and work with engineering. While it took much more of my time, it helped in dealing with the four issues.

The role of product marketing is to define product requirements. It is engineering's responsibility to implement the requirements using the appropriate architectural foundations and algorithms that would make the product scalable over time. The product manager was known to cross his boundary by not only specifying implementation requirements but also demanding they be implemented as per his requirements. This resulted in disagreements with engineering and product delays.

The product manager had major anger issues, leading to frequent angry outbursts against engineering (ranging from personal attacks) in the planning meetings, which killed the chance of any participation from engineering and all relationships. I became a coach and guide to the product manager. Prior to a meeting, we collaboratively identified and agreed to the objectives for that meeting. I consistently reminded the product manager (before, during, and after the meeting) that we were paid to plan, do the product roll-out, and work with sales to sell it, while the engineering team was paid to implement and own any issues that came up with poor implementation. Meetings started going well without the verbal disagreements, and engineering started engaging with marketing. That got the product development on track.

Outcome

From a product point of view, things fell into line to meet the major product line roll-out planned later in the year.

• HR decided to let go of the product manager after multiple "must shape up" warnings—killing his career with the company.

The Scenario

Establishing true interoperability of products with a specific set of ecosystem partners was critical for my employer because much revenue depended on it. The integration between our product and the ecosystem partners' products was crucial for realizing that revenue. There was a problem. Our VP of sales was a stakeholder with a vested interest in bringing the integration activities on track because several sales opportunities relied on the integration. I was asked to lead the project to bring them on track. As a first step, together with the VP of sales, I met the top partners to understand the issues from their point of view. It became very clear that we were not prioritizing the engineering enhancements to support their products fast enough. When I asked how soon they needed our product enhancements for better integration, they shared that they were already working with a small, proactive startup company on a much better integrated system for mutual customers. That was a clear threat to our revenue and market share. I shared what I had learned with our engineering team. Engineering's attitude was that we were the leaders, and hence, there was nothing to worry about. The key partners had seen this behavior, and that was the reason why they decided to engage with a smaller company that was motivated to work with them.

By taking on this role, I had to clearly set the stage with my management of where things were with the ecosystem before I embarked on developing a strategy and an implementation plan to bring the ecosystem partners on track with a good solution for mutual customers. This left me with an immediate task with each partner. That was to arrange a management review meeting (MRM) with each partner to achieve two objectives:

1. To get the two management teams aligned on the objectives and expectations
2. To authorize the necessary support for the ecosystem project.

When I started working with a key partner on an MRM, the partner brought up an issue with an emotional side to it. The issue raised by the partner was to keep a certain member from our team away from the MRM. I was told that this was a "must address" emotional issue if we wanted their key management to attend the MRM.

That was a very delicate issue because the person I had to keep away from the MRM was in a higher position than me.  

Next Steps

Setting up the MRM with the right management players from the partner was critical for enabling product sales and joint marketing opportunities. After taking some time to recover from the shock, I followed the advice of the VP of sales and sought the help of my senior management (Sr. VP) to address the issue raised by the partner. Skipping a few levels of the management and going to the VP could have backfired for me. Contrary to my fear, the Sr. VP took it positively and came up with a plan to address the issue without hurting anyone involved. He actively participated in the meeting, supporting the partnership.   

Outcome

Achieved the alignment needed.

• Got the project with that specific vendor on track!

The Scenario

I was hired by a startup as a consultant to project manage their participation at the most critical trade show for the company. Apart from the logistics of getting and putting up an attractive trade show booth, I had to work with the team to develop the key message for target customers, plan technical product demos to support the messaging, and arrange and manage customer meetings in the built-in meeting room. After I got the key message approved by the management, I started working on the event details to promote that message through signage, product demos, and more. I was working with multiple outside contractors as well as internal sales and technical management on all of the above. The company had been working with an external PR consultant who was brought in by the head of sales for media announcements. Although I was not responsible for drafting the event-related press release, which was already underway, I was asked to review and provide feedback. The external PR consultant had drafted a press release.

The Issue

When the media announcement came for my review, I was not happy with the messaging. My solution was to flip the top and the second-level messaging, citing that the top-level message was catering to vendors, not customers, while the second-level message was the one that targeted our addressable market of customers. Before communicating my feedback to the team, with an intention to help the PR consultant, I set up a one-on-one meeting with him to discuss the message. I gave him reasons why flipping the order of his two messages would be more beneficial. Unfortunately, the PR consultant took it personally, and his ego-based behavior popped right out. He started questioning my knowledge and experience with PR. Since PR was not my responsibility, I let it go.

Next Steps

I met with my manager, the CEO, and explained the benefits of flipping the PR message. To which he requested I write up an email explaining the benefits and copying the rest of the team. When I did that, the head of sales stepped in to support the PR consultant's message. At that point, my CEO suggested that I leave the media announcement to the PR consultant and focus on the event. 

Outcome

• The event was a huge success as measured by the CEO and the CTO (Chief Technical Officer) in terms of,
  • The visibility (from signage and editorial coverage) and the booth attendance achieved for the company at the show.
  • Booking of every slot in the meeting room with high-quality target customers, who were reached using a targeted email campaign.
  • A key publisher promoted my customer-targeted message and the product demos in an article that summarized the show.
  • The number of leads generated exceeded all expectations.
• Media announcement
  • Brought in too many inquiries from the wrong audience, the vendors, and none from the target customers. The CEO was furious with thew outcome. That is when he saw the truth in my advice.

The Scenario

Two weeks after I joined a company as a vendor relations manager, a reorganization placed me reporting to my colleague, who was just promoted. He immediately assigned a different set of vendor accounts for me to manage. My job was to get the vendors to certify our software product for mutual customer use and to get a press release with a quote from their management stating the certification. This certification requires up to 6 person-months of work by the vendor. If they already have a certified solution from one of our competitors, they typically do not spend the time and effort to certify another solution. 

I was clearly told what my top 3 accounts were. My new manager also summarized the top account in three sentences. They were:

The top account had been working with us on certification for 4 years and identified 20 items in the project to be addressed.

1. Fifteen were to be completed by the vendor and five by us. The vendor had already completed 12, and we were almost done with one item.
2. In the latest meeting where VPs from both companies were present, it almost ended in a fist fight.

Right after, he asked me how soon I could get the vendor to certify. My spontaneous response was that I would let him know in a week.  

Next Steps

Right or wrong, I felt the account was totally mismanaged and under-delivered by us. Also, I could empathize with how the vendor felt after completing 12 of the 15 tasks while we had barely completed one. I could have spoken to my engineering team to find out more information, but I decided not to do that because, to me, the vendor's expectations were much more important in this case. Being technically familiar with not only the certification requirements but also the vendor's priorities (I had the experience of working for a vendor), I could see how they felt about the relationship. All this took just 10 minutes.

Right after, I called Mr. Edward, the point person at the vendor, and introduced myself. We had a short discussion, and the key points were

• Edward responded with a very angry tone that they would never (emphasized "never") certify our product. That was an emotional outpour! He was furious because everyone from our company wanted nothing but certification of our product and did no work to enable that for the partner.
• My spontaneous response was that I was "not" interested in certification. Instead, I asked for a working design kit that mutual customers can use to design their chips. Because of my technical knowledge, I knew the work that the vendor had already completed made the design kit just short of being certification-ready.
• My next point with him was that if I could only deliver three things to him in the next three months, what would those three things be. Since this was on a Friday afternoon, I told him that I would call him Monday afternoon so he would have time to think it through. I knew that the three items would be the enhancements needed for the partner to certify. That would be a stage 2 deliverable. 

When I called him on Monday, there was no sign of anger in his voice, and he had the top three things for me. He also told me that I was the first person from our company that was not for certification, which he never expected, but liked it.  

Next, I started working with my engineering team on the three requests from Edward and told my manager that I could get the top vendor to certify in 6 months (with some built-in extra time to make it happen). He was not happy with the 6-month window, but he had no choice.

I delivered all three items to Edward one month earlier than promised. He thanked me and confirmed the fact that with the three deliverables they would be able to create a very good design kit. He also shared that he was going back to engineering and expected that transition to happen in the next three months. I immediately responded by asking him if there was anything else that I could do for him to end his current role in a positive way, such as a joint marketing campaign. Next came the best response from him. That the design kit was technically certification-ready and announced that would be a positive outcome for him. Of course, I offered to help him accomplish that. I suggested that it would be great for him to create the first draft of the press release. He did.

When our marketing communications team and my upper management saw the press draft, they could not believe that I was able to turn around the relationship and even obtain the certification from the vendor in less than three months.

Outcome

After the announcement, our sales people started receiving calls from mutual customers for more software licenses—the ultimate success metric!