Many product managers probably spend a majority of their time and energy focused on what to build next, and relatively less energy on supporting people to use what is already built.
But is there any better investment than making sure what you’ve built is being used to its fullest potential?
That’s because the people who use your platforms and products are the most important piece of the puzzle. It doesn’t matter how great a system is if it’s not used to its potential to accomplish its tactical goal. Cranking out a bunch of innovation that doesn’t get fully used doesn’t do your organization much good.
You need your systems to be well understood and well used. And to get there you need to “flood the zone” with training and support.
Sure, iterating and developing the tool itself is a central part of the job for your technology accelerator team. But equally if not more important is an all-out, ally-minded dedication to ensuring that people have as much support as they need to use the existing capabilities. Such much so that when we’re building a team, we often fill an explicitly support-oriented role even before filling a more technical role.
When done well, this kind of support often looks much more casual than formal. It’s part of the relationship building you do all the time.
People don’t just attend a couple trainings and then remember everything they need to know from there forward. That’s not how it really works, right? People need constant support, clarification, and reminders — in context -— as they’re trying to accomplish the work itself.
And by providing that level of support, you’ll be getting as much help with your job as they will be getting help with theirs. Because to improve your systems you need constant feedback about what people’s challenges are, what’s working well, and what could be improved.
You’ve designed a racecar, and customized it for the race, and the expert drivers take it around the track and tell you how it feels. You make further adjustments, they take it out again, and on and on. You’re also watching them circle the track and noting things from your perspective, things they might not notice themselves about their own usage, you may see some slipping around the corner and know just how to tighten that up. You are not an inexperienced order taker here, you’re an expert engineer with experience and ideas about how to make things better. But you need to be there, watching them work, in order to bring this experience to bear. The cycle never stops, though the improvements get more and more precise, eventually addressing every aspect of the race.
You can’t race the car for them. They need you to be thinking about new ways to make the engine more efficient and powerful, or new ways to make the shape a bit more optimally aerodynamic. But you can’t do this hiding behind a ticket queue, you have to get out there and be a part of the race, ready to jump in and help however is needed.
So don’t begrudgingly offer support around the edges. And don’t wait until people seek you out, or you’ll miss 80% of the useful stuff and 80% of the chance to make an impact. Flood the zone with user support! Every repetition you get out there on the field will make your users more confident, more secure, and give you constant reminders about what the actual priorities are.