How This Product Manager Turned Frustration into Trust-Building Feedback

Mhm. Sure. Um, So this, this will be, um, so the way, the way we work is we have, so I, I, I have You know, stakeholders directly on the business side, um, you know, whether it's sales operations or it's, uh, you know, uh, retail, um, but I always work with the business transformation team and the business transformation team, their responsibility is mostly to, you know, make sure the benefits, um, you know, we are, um, expecting they, they validate that they also help us with. Um, you know, any, any aspect of change management on the business side, also help me with go to market plans or implementation plan. So when I was like, you know, working on recently on, on a project for, you know, there's a project we have for inventory management on the stores, um, so I worked with, with my business transformation, uh, team member to come up with a plan and I think that the goal there was to establish that if we have a little bit of background on this project. So the project is. You have 10 amount of inventory sitting in your store. You build a forecast 3 months in the future or whatever, and then you say, do I have access? And if you have excess inventory in the store, what's the optimal way to kind of, you know, handle that situation. So I had to work with this manager to say, hey, we have a, you know, our analysis shows this much excess inventory we have, um, if we, you know, um, um, do the monetization properly whether it's sending back to vendor or sending back to warehouse, this is what our, um, benefit might look like, and there's a range, of course, you know, the benefits and all that thing. And I share with him, and I kind of don't get any response. And I'm like, I, I tried to emailing him. I tried to slacking him, then I picked up the phone and I'm like, like what's going on here? And he said like, yeah, I'm looking at your numbers. I'm kind of kind of validating those numbers, um, and, uh, give me, give me a couple of weeks, and a couple of weeks passes by and I don't hear back anything. And I'm like, we need to move along, uh, move this, this one ahead. Uh, you tell me like what am I missing? What can else I can give you, um, and he's like. Uh, I got this additional work. I have this other priorities. I'm gonna come to this again. And then, so I, I kind of lost, um, not, I won't say I lost patience, but I lost like if you just sit on it, um, you know, we're gonna miss the deadline for submitting the business case and we won't get the funding we need to do this work, um, so I then, I had like, you know, his, his name is Sachin, so I'm like searching, let's just, let's talk candidly like, um. You and me are part of the same team. Uh, our goals are the same. Um, how can I help? What's going on here? And he says like, A, I'm getting so much pushback from finance on this. I'm like, why? And he's like finance is saying what you guys are doing is the right thing to do in terms of operations, but if I take all this inventory off my books, it's going to look bad because I'm going to do some write-off from the finance books. So you guys need to kind of uh scatter this over the. Over multiple quarters so it doesn't hit the books right away. Um, so I'm like, we can talk to finance together. I can, I can bring some additional data and help you with that. It's like, no, no, no, that's my responsibility. You don't need to get involved. So he's got like a little bit defensive about this and I'm like. No, it's not your responsibility or my responsibility. It's our responsibility to get this through, um, so I, I was very direct and, and, you know, and so he finally agreed to, to take me along. Uh, finance had a bunch of questions. I had most of the data available and kind of we validated through that and, and we came up with a scenario. We came up with a scenario. Look, if we monetize 50% of our inventory. Um, every quarter, like in two quarters, here's a benefit if you monetize everything first quarter, there was like a lot of scenario planning we could do, but he didn't have that capability and he didn't want me to bring along because he thought like it's his job or I don't know, maybe it felt like a little territorial to me or something. So, so I had to work through that and um I mean we still work together and we're still delivering the project, um, but it was a little. Like, you know, situation we had, I had to handle being very, very assertive and very direct.

Um, if I'm just, so that's the way I always, I always think about like what was, what was, if I was in his shoes, what would I have done? I think to me, um, because he was also new to this role, he felt like if I can't handle this, it will look like I'm not able to do my job and might look back on my performance. So I think he took that kind of idea of ownership more single threaded to me, if I'm, I'm responsible or something. I really don't care who I'm getting help from. If I'm getting it done, that to me is ownership. Ownership to me doesn't mean always I do this. Ownership to me is I'm getting it done. I think that's how I would put it.

I mean, uh, I think the feedback. Um, I can't, I, what I would say I would have done differently is I would have reached out to, to my partner and saying up front is like, if finance is pushing back on me, um, I don't think I have enough data to kind of push back on them, and I would like you to kind of, you know, come along and, and, you know, we can, we can, like, you know, talk to finance together. I would approach it differently in terms of receiving feedback, um. I think, I mean, Maybe I'm biased, but I think I, I was like being patient, being um Being very open and I didn't try to go and escalate the situation to directors or anybody because I knew I'm going to be working with this person for a long time, so I had to build that relationship as well.

Mhm. Mhm.

Uh, 00, yeah, this, the

no, it felt, um, It felt like no matter, um, you know, I, I mean, I feel like I have a lot of examples um when when you ask me a question, I had a little bit of difficulty picking the right one this one or that one, this one or that one, so that was one thing, um, another thing is I think it, it definitely. Telling me is like I need to. Think a little bit more deeper on some of the questions like this last one here, right? I, you know, I didn't have a good answer on how would I like to receive the feedback. I think I get the feedback in the right way, right? You always think that, right? You are the, but if you put them in, in your, that was a very good question, um, to, to kind of turn things around, um. Yeah. Um, no, this, this was intense, but, uh, it feels like, um, Letting me know where my, my, my weak spots are and what I should focus on. So I really thank you for that.

Yeah, OK, all right, thank you. How do I schedule the session, uh, for tomorrow? I,

Yeah, makes sense. You know what, yep. So Brendan, how do I schedule the session with you for

OK, all right, let me look into that. All right, thank you so much.

Thanks.