The Best-in-Class Product Manager Part 2: The People Pillar

Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.

  Change Management   Product Management  

In The Best-in-Class Product Manager Part 1: The Policy Pillar, I defined four key pillars that a best-in-class product manager drives, as follows:

1. Policy – The governing corporate and regulatory rules a business system must align and adhere to
2. People – The skills and knowledge humans need to enable a business system
3. Process – The human activities required both with and without technology to enable a business system
4. Technology – The automation required to enable a business system

The article focused on organization-wide, division-wide and regulatory policies and how a best-in-class product manager incorporated policies into business systems implementations. Next up is the people pillar.

Until artificial intelligence achieves Skynet-like awareness (for you Terminator fans), people will be a critical pillar in business systems implementations. Understanding what is entailed to do their jobs, where the pain points are, how their pain points can be alleviated, and their appetite (or resistance) to change is crucial to a smooth human-element landing.

I’ve heard everything from, “This is going to make my job so much easier!” to “This is going to eliminate my job!” to “Why are we trying to fix something that isn’t broken?” to “You’re making my job harder!” when implementing…

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