【观点】别过来，我不想探讨这个话题---让产品经理去管理CEO！

Some of the greatest icons and most successful CEOs such as Mary Barra (GM), Indra Nooyi (PepsiCo), and Lisa Su (AMD) are product leaders at heart, and had careers in product management and product development before taking the top job. You would assume that if there are some remarkable leaders that know the product, then they should lead the product organization. But often this is not the case.

一些最伟大的偶像和最成功的首席执行官，如玛丽•巴拉(通用汽车)、英德拉•努伊(百事可乐)和丽萨•苏(AMD)，本质上都是产品领导者，在担任最高职位之前都从事过产品管理和产品开发。你可能会认为，如果有一些卓越的领导者了解产品，那么他们就应该领导产品组织。但通常情况并非如此。

What if your CEO is suffering from delusions of product greatness？ Unfortunately, they’re not all like those leaders with deep experience in product. As a leader in the product organization, what do you do to manage a CEO run amok？

如果你的CEO正患于产品伟大的幻想中，该怎么办？不幸的是，他们并不都像那些拥有丰富产品经验的领导者那样。作为产品组织的领导，你该怎么管理一个横行霸道的CEO呢？

The Challenge

挑战

CEOs often think that they understand product better than anyone else. But maybe they don’t.

CEO们通常认为他们比任何人都更了解产品。但也许他们并不是这样。

CEOs often think that they can get the development team to solve a “little” customer problem without impacting priorities. But often such requests meddle with team priorities.

CEO们通常认为他们可以让开发团队在不影响优先级的情况下解决一个“小”的客户问题。但这样的要求往往会干扰团队的优先级。

CEOs often think they know customer requirements better than anyone else. They may know certain things about certain customers. But they don’t know everything about all of the customers.

CEO们常常认为他们比任何人都更了解客户的需求。他们可能知道某些客户的某些情况。但他们并不了解客户的全部。

And their misapprehension of their own skills and role in this domain can have serious consequences and amplify these challenges. For example, CEOs are well-placed to meddle in matters that are two-levels below the C-Suite, changing priorities with a few words to folks at a lower level on the org chart. These shifting priorities can muddy the waters significantly by losing focus on what customer-facing marketing and product management folks know is the right approach.

他们对自己在这一领域的技能和作用的误解可能会产生严重后果，并放大这些挑战。例如，CEO们很擅长干涉比高管级别低两级的事务，对组织结构图上较低级别的人说几句话就能改变优先级。这些优先级的变化会使公司失去对面向客户的市场营销和产品管理人员所知道的正确方法的关注，从而使事情变得严重混乱。

Why Is There A Conflict？

为什么会有冲突？

One of the problems is background and typical skill sets. In a small company, the CEO is often the founder, and founders are such because they have a deep insight into a solution that customers require. Often CEOs come from a customer background rather than a product marketing background. They understand customers intuitively but product management requires a laser-beam focus on discovery, and many CEOs don’t have that background.

其中一个问题是背景和典型的技能集合。在小公司里，CEO往往是创始人，而创始人之所以是这样，是因为他们对客户需要的解决方案有深刻的洞察力。CEO往往来自客户背景，而不是产品营销背景。他们凭直觉了解客户，但产品管理需要对发现的高度关注，而许多CEO没有这种背景。

Let’s outline the difference between the CEO’s perspective and a product leader’s in terms of perspective and time.

让我们从视角和时间的角度来概述一下CEO的视角和产品领导者的视角之间的区别。

The CEO’s perspective is broad, and they need to balance these stakeholders’ requirements even when they are conflicting. Their world involves：

CEO的视角是宽广的，他们需要平衡这些利益相关者的需求，即使这些需求是相互冲突的。他们的世界是：

Shareholders

Customers

Employees

股东

客户

员工

The Chief Product Officer’s perspective is also broad, but it is focused on products and customers. Their world involves：

首席产品官的视角也很宽广，但它关注的是产品和客户。他们的世界是：

Product Strategy

Product Management

Product Development

产品战略

产品管理

产品开发

However, when it comes to timeframes, product leaders might have a longer perspective than the CEO who is worried about next quarter and the next big customer deal. A good product leader follows product roadmaps with a multiyear horizon. These roadmaps often capture the whole product development life cycle from innovation, growth, maturity and decline, with an eye towards the next product cycle.

然而，当谈到时间框架时，产品领导者可能比CEO有更长远的眼光，后者只担心下个季度和下一笔大客户交易。一个好的产品领导者会以多年的眼光来遵循产品路线图。这些路线图通常会捕捉到从创新、增长、成熟到衰落的整个产品开发生命周期，并着眼于下一个产品周期。

This is not to say that a CEO doesn’t have a long term view. But a product leader’s view is almost always the long view. The CEO often has many short-term priorities mixed in, too.

这并不是说CEO没有长远的眼光。但产品领导者的眼光几乎总是长远的。CEO通常也会把许多短期优先事项混合在一起。

Although the CEO’s remit is different from the head of product’s, they are aligned in several ways but misaligned in others. The secret to success is understanding how both roles contribute to higher level outcomes： revenues, profits, stakeholder success, and building a brand. Where they are aligned is around new product innovation and resulting growth in profit and revenue; but where they may not be aligned is around product strategy and the long term drivers of customer success.

虽然CEO的职责与产品主管不同，但他们在某些方面是一致的，但在其他方面是不一致的。成功的秘诀在于理解这两个角色如何促进更高层次的结果：收入、利润、利益相关者的成功，以及建立品牌。他们的共同点是围绕新产品创新和由此带来的利润和收入增长；但他们可能不一致的地方是围绕产品战略和客户成功的长期驱动因素。

Symptoms of CEO Meddling CEO

干预的症状

Since the CEO’s range is so broad, and since they are the most accountable person in the organization, difficulties appear when they stray outside of their leadership lane. This often appears as meddling with what the product team has already decided. In most cases, that means that CEOs are interfering in what leadership has already approved.

由于CEO的范围很广，并且他们是组织中最负责任的人，当他们偏离自己的领导范围时，就会出现困难。这通常表现为对产品团队已经决定的事情的干涉。在大多数情况下，这意味着CEO正在干涉领导层已经批准的事情。

When the CEO starts rearranging Engineering’s priorities, certain predictable symptoms appear. For instance, it might appear as too many initiatives launched that are off-strategy or only tangentially related to it. Or the dates of the next release slips to the next quarter.

当CEO开始重新安排工程团队的优先事项时，某些可预见的症状就会出现。例如，它可能表现为启动了太多脱离战略的计划，或只与战略有些微关联。或者下一个发布的日期滑落到下一个季度。

It sometimes appears as product initiatives that get re-defined by the CEO internally. These redefinitions (related to the phenomenon of scope creep) don’t necessarily come from the areas of the company with the most robust customer knowledge. They come from the biggest business card. Or from whomever plays the best politics. And sometimes these decisions impact the other products on the roadmap, where they become less differentiated.

它有时表现为由CEO在内部重新定义的产品计划。这些重新定义(与范围蔓延现象相关)并不一定来自公司拥有最强大的客户知识的领域。它们来自于最大的名片。或者来自政治玩得最好的人。有时这些决策会影响路线图上的其他产品，使它们变得不那么差异化。

Meddling and political maneuvering is the antithesis of strategy. You set your product strategy based on the evidence. As a product leader, you are the owner and representative of that strategy. At base, the meddling behavior, the desire to change priorities suddenly, is an anti-strategic approach and that’s why it is often wasteful and counterproductive. Yet, it ultimately is the CEO’s prerogative although they don’t see the collateral damage.

干预和政治操纵是战略的对立面。你要根据证据制定你的产品战略。作为产品领导者，你是该战略的所有者和代表。从根本上说，干预行为，突然改变优先顺序的欲望，是一种反战略的方法，这就是为什么它经常是浪费和适得其反的。然而，这最终是CEO的特权，尽管他们没有看到附带的损害。

What Should Product Leaders Do About it？

产品领导者应该怎么做？

There are several ways that product leaders can head off these challenges and better manage their CEO. Having a voice with product management and marketing skill sets in the C-Suite (a CMO or CPO) is a good start, although it’s not sufficient.

有几种方法可以让产品领导者避开这些挑战，更好地管理他们的CEO。在高管层(CMO或CPO)拥有具有产品管理和营销技能的声音是一个良好的开始，尽管这还不够。

It comes down to having clearly defined roles and responsibilities for senior executives that they abide by. Especially in smaller companies, CEOs can think that they personify the company and can simply do what they want. This is dangerous thinking. Product leaders should call their CEOs out when this happens, and remind them of specific situations in the past where a similar decision resulted in a bad outcome such as losing a major customer, or taking a big hit in revenues.

归根结底，这需要为高级管理人员明确定义他们所遵守的角色和责任。尤其是在小公司，CEO们会认为他们是公司的化身，可以做他们想做的事。这是一种危险的想法。当这种情况发生时，产品领导者应该把他们的CEO叫出来，并提醒他们在过去的特定情况下，类似的决策导致了糟糕的结果，如失去一个大客户，或收入遭受重大打击。

CEOs, like every other job in the company, have a defined role, which is largely facing outward toward investors and auditors, while creating a longer-term vision for the company. CMOs/CPOs are, presumably, senior product management experts whose role is to represent all stakeholders when it comes to the business of creating and marketing new products. Remember, that only the head of product can call out these bad behaviors – and it is their responsibility to do so.

与公司的其他职位一样，CEO的角色也很明确，主要是面向投资者和审计师，同时为公司创造更长远的愿景。CMO / CPO大概是高级产品管理专家，他们的角色是在创造和营销新产品的业务中代表所有利益相关方。记住，只有产品主管才能指出这些不良行为——这是他们的责任。

Not only should each of these C-Suite roles have a clear definition, but those who report to them need to have a clear “chain of command.” And individual managers and contributors need to be taught to stick to the script and not shift when the CEO comes nosing around the office. At a minimum, managers that are asked to shift priorities should immediately let the product leadership know about it.

不仅这些高管的每个角色都应该有一个明确的定义，那些向他们报告的人也需要有一个明确的“指挥链”。此外，还需要教导个别经理和贡献者要遵守脚本，不要在CEO巡视办公室时改变方向。至少，被要求改变优先事项的经理应该立即让产品主管知道。

Above all, organizations need to clarify who owns product definition and how the CEO’s voice gets incorporated into the roadmap. Product leaders must be clear that their role is to map competition, technology, and the market to create a product roadmap that reconciles all three of these axes. Define a process whereby CEO’s and other senior leaders review, build, pressure test, and approve the roadmap. And when that process breaks down, don’t be afraid to call out the CEO.

最重要的是，企业需要澄清谁拥有产品定义，以及CEO的意见如何被纳入路线图。产品领导者必须清楚，他们的角色是映射竞争、技术和市场，以创建一个协调所有这三个轴的产品路线图。定义一个流程，让CEO和其他高级领导者审查、构建、压力测试和批准路线图。当这个过程出现问题时，不要害怕把CEO叫出来。

After product leaders have defined and reached agreement on the CEO’s role in product definition, the product roadmap, and engineering priorities, they have a basis to resist having these priorities changed by mandate.

在产品领导者定义并就CEO在产品定义、产品路线图和工程优先级方面的角色达成一致后，他们就有了抵制这些优先级因授权而改变的基础。

Here are a few other tips for managing the CEO：

以下是管理CEO的一些其他建议：

When your CEO puts in a request for the development team to make a “quick, small” change by asking an engineer to stop what they are doing, and shift priorities, make sure you are notified.

当你的CEO请求开发团队做一个“快速的，小的”改变，要求工程师停止他们正在做的事情，改变优先级，确保你得到通知。

When you are notified, bring it to the attention of the head of development and the CEO and deftly bring up the consequences of this change (remember to cite specific concrete actions and outcomes).

当你收到通知时，让开发主管和CEO注意到这个变化，并巧妙地提出这个变化的后果(记住要引用具体的具体行动和结果)。

Ask for forced ranking of priorities and then agree to support the change (and put it in the roadmap) or prevail on the CEO to delay their request to a better time, or reassign it to a less critical development team.

要求对优先级进行强制排序，然后同意支持变更(并将其放入路线图中)，或者说服CEO将他们的请求推迟到更好的时间，或者将其重新分配给一个不那么关键的开发团队。

Be preemptive and when there is a program initiated by the CEO or other product outsider that failed, memorialize that case, and keep it in a list of tangible, concrete examples of the consequences of meddling.

先发制人，当CEO或其他产品外部人士发起的项目失败时，记住这个案例，并将其记录在一个列表中，列出真实的、具体的例子，说明干预的后果。

Leaders Enable the Success of Others

领导者使他人成功

Finally, first-class organizations frame the CEO – and all senior leaders – as people whose job is to enable the success of the other folks in the company. Leadership is not about imposing one’s will on others. It’s about enabling them to be successful.

最后，一流的组织把CEO——以及所有高级领导——定义为使公司其他人获得成功的人。领导能力不是把自己的意志强加于人。而是让他们获得成功。

One of the CEO’s first and most important roles is to assemble a team of experts with a stake in the company’s success. The aim is to hire the right people and then enable them to be successful at what they do.

CEO的首要任务之一，也是最重要的任务之一，就是组建一个与公司成功息息相关的专家团队。其目的是雇用正确的人，然后使他们在他们所做的事情上取得成功。

And, of course, this goes for your product people, from the CMO/CPO, down to the individual product manager and salesperson. The CEO is doing their job correctly when they enable the success of product marketing, which in turn enables customer success and brand success.

当然，这也适用于你的产品人员，从CMO/CPO，到个别的产品经理和销售人员。当CEO促成了产品营销的成功，进而促成了客户的成功和品牌的成功时，他们就正确地完成了自己的工作。

Final thoughts

最终的想法

Product managers can manage CEOs by influencing them to understand that product management is a skill as exacting as coding or materials engineering. By the time the company grew out of its start-up phase, the CEO probably brought in senior product people to run the product development and product management organizations.

产品经理可以通过影响CEO理解产品管理是一种技能，就像编码或材料工程一样严格。当公司走出初创阶段时，CEO可能会引入资深的产品人员来管理产品开发和产品管理组织。

CEOs need to let these folks do their jobs. That’s what they are there for. As product leader it is your job to uphold the value of your discipline, and the integrity of the product strategy, even in the face of meddling.

CEO需要让这些人做他们的工作。这就是他们存在的目的。作为产品领导者，你的工作是维护你的纪律的价值，以及产品战略的完整性，即使面对干预。

As a product leader, your role is also to understand the differences in perspective. It is also up to you to set the direction and then defend your strategy. To prevail, you need a clear-eyed understanding of your responsibilities, the related processes, and you have to have a firm grasp of the product and customer details. And you need to be willing to take a stand when the CEO inadvertently sabotages your roadmap.

作为一名产品领导者，你的职责还包括从不同的角度理解差异。设定方向，然后为自己的战略辩护，也是你的责任。为了取胜，你需要对自己的职责、相关流程有清醒的认识，你必须对产品和客户细节有坚定的把握。而且，当CEO无意中破坏了你的路线图时，你需要愿意表明立场。

作者介绍

John Carter is a widely respected expert on product development. He is an inventor of Bose’s Noise Cancelling Headphones and designer of Apple’s New Product Process. As Founder of TCGen Inc., he has consulted for Abbott, Amazon, Apple, Cisco, HP, IBM, Mozilla, Roche, 3M and many other organizations. He is the author of “Innovate Products Faster,” a handbook for accelerating product development speed and innovation. He currently serves on the Cirrus Logic board of directors. John has an MS in Engineering from MIT.

约翰·卡特是一位广受尊敬的产品开发专家。他是Bose降噪耳机的发明者，也是苹果新产品流程的设计师。作为TCGen Inc.的创始人，他曾为雅培、亚马逊、苹果、思科、惠普、IBM、Mozilla、罗氏、3M等多家机构提供咨询。他是《更快创新产品》(Innovate Products Faster)一书的作者，这是一本加速产品开发速度和创新的手册。他目前任职于Cirrus Logic的董事会。John拥有麻省理工学院工程硕士学位。