No matter the size of the company, streamlining collaboration is a challenge for all product managers. That said, the challenge is just a bit greater at a company like Cisco Meraki, which has more than 2,000 employees working on highly specialized teams and in offices around the world.
In his work, Neil Kulkarni, product management leader, told Built In San Francisco that he commonly collaborates with stakeholders from no less than seven different teams. Kulkarni certainly faces different challenges to streamlining collaboration than PMs at small and growing tech companies. Yet the approach he has developed to work with so many different teams simultaneously is one any product manager could adopt.
Read on to learn his tips and tricks.
Companies use Cisco Meraki’s platform to manage, monitor and optimize distributed remote networks.
Describe your approach to collaboration in product management.
My personal approach to collaboration is based on three key aspects:
First, context setting. You need to ensure all stakeholders have context on why the project matters for the business and its customers. Articulate what problem you are trying to solve.
Second, goal setting. Define what the goals of the project are.
Third, trust building. Strengthen relationships with your colleagues by sharing updates during the course of the project, caring for the people involved and the cause at hand, and daring to hold yourself and those working with you accountable.
You need to ensure all stakeholders have context on why the project matters for the business and its customers.”
How can you tell when collaboration is becoming unproductive or inefficient?
There are many reasons why collaboration may break down. Most commonly, I’ve seen it manifest through stakeholder frustration, missed timelines or analysis paralysis, where, despite many hours of seemingly collaborative meetings, there is very little progress.
What are the best practices you’ve developed for keeping collaboration streamlined without tipping into collaboration overload?
I have discovered that maintaining the following guidelines or checkpoints throughout a project is critical:
Clearly identify stakeholders who need to contribute to the project versus those who only need to be informed about decisions and progress.
Collaboration doesn’t necessarily equate to live meetings; be mindful of what aspects of a project can be done asynchronously.
Try to create an environment where everyone feels they have space to communicate and contribute. This decreases the probability of having last-minute surprises.
Leave little room for assumptions. Communicate frequently with stakeholders and try to keep it informative and succinct.
