Alignment works, but it requires a lot of effort.

However a decision is made, it is made in a manner consistent with the culture of the organization. I’ve done change management in an organization where you couldn’t communicate with the IT managers of other departments even if you worked for the CIO. Nuts! But, that was the way they did things.

Marketing communications has to sell the buying criteria in competition with the buying criteria of your competitors. In a sense they manage a portfolio of buying critera and other messaging. Those buying criteria would seem to need a product manager. Whose buying criteria are these? Yours, the PM.

Similarly, communications channels are sold like a product. You might have a forum where you capture user generated content. So you have protfolios of channels. Whose channels are these? Yeah, yours, the PM.

And, all of this amounts to networks of investment and transactions whether cash, or info, or one more customer step closer to the sales funnel. Who owns this network? Who coordinates across all these portfolios? Well, you do? Did you notice?

All of these things, and those minimal marketable feature sets, are just classes of assets that put cash on the table, classes of assets that you manage with the same tool, portfolio management.

Since product managers come late to the game in most startups, the product is pretty much underway, and these days may be responding to price-based competition, commodification, late market pressures and recession. In these situations, the focus must move from being narrowly on the product to a wider view of the offer. Your product doesn’t get to market before it is embodied in an offer. And, once it is just like everyone elses, code may not be the quickest way back to differentiation.

Strategies have outcomes, economic outcomes. Product managers must be able to move from the details of the offer out through layers of economic indifference and ensure that the econmic outcomes are reaped. Ultimately, it is the economic outcomes that matter most. As you move up from product management, they will matter even more.

I stress enablement, because product managers don’t execute. The line mangement sees to execution–peope and process. As a product manager, you better not be executing. You influence. You use your influence to inspire and to remove roadblocks–to enable. You orchestrate. You decide. You determine. You legislate. You answer. You get forgiveness for yourself, and for your contributors. You don’t execute. They execute. They know how. You don’t even know the questions to ask about that how. Oh, sure you can code, but is an offer code? Only a tiny bit is code. The rest is anything but code. It’s the contributors that say to themselves “Hey, I’m getting out of be today, because I’m letting the team, my product manager, my company, down.” So provide the leadership, the enablement, and when it is over, have the team stand and take a bow while you and the rest of the room clap. Stand over there with the rest of the romm while you do it. It ain’t about you.

And, while you are driving the executors, you’ll have your opportunities to influence strategy, so lead your executives from behind. Nobody will notice that brilliant strategy you helped them develop, anymore than they will acknowledge how everything got done without obsticles.

Frankly, I’m the invisible man, the shepard leader, I ensure the future, and really, nobody notices.