5 key tips to lead products as a consultant

So you are a consultant, “You don’t ‘own’ a product” they say, “You get paid by companies to shape their products and services, charge your hourly rate, close laptop at 6pm and you are done” they say.

Well, not really.

Successful product leaders are, more than anything, great coaches and major ambassadors. Their drive and passion for delivering value and turning problems into solutions usually comes from within, not from their hourly rate. Which poses a major question : How do you drive a product which is not yours? How do you shape, lead, launch and pivot a value proposition which isn’t ultimately your ‘problem’? How do you exert extreme lateral leadership without any prioritisation power over backlog, roadmap or any ultimate say over product strategy?

Good questions. Let me share with you a few tips on how to be a decent consultant AND a product leader, respected and successful in de-risking product direction as well as building trust within your assigned team, whilst having fun and creating value for users.

Tip #1 : Be kind, ask questions and resist the ‘must fix it’ instinct

When entering a new context where you are hired to shape a product with a team you do not get to create and coach from start, avoid the ‘fix it all’ approach and start by asking questions, listen in and try to detect core challenges and opportunities. See it as your mini problem framing to get to know your client. Workshop, map journeys, sit down and grab tons of coffees with industry experts and people you will need to work with in the near future. Understand their pains, levers and objectives. Do so even before starting to look at the actual product | value proposition you are hired to build, fix or accelerate. It is important to not underestimate the ecosystem you are asked to play in as this will determine many future decisions taken by you and your product squad.

Tip #2 : Assume the worst and start there

Forget all you and your product peers talk about when discussing mature Agile, established product lean cross-functional teams, scrum, iteration, good practice in user research and validation. Forget it all and start from scratch. Most clients and organisations you enter as a product consultants have no idea what you are talking about anyway. They won’t know what you and your team (if you are lucky a cross functional one you brought in with you) stand for anyway. They will assume you are a program manager and give you operational|tactical tasks at best. They will question your value and your addition to the team. They will ask you to build stuff for you and look at you strangely when being challenged on data, research, validation and problem first approach. They will really really dislike you. And that’s when you will know you are doing a very good job! Disrupting and challenging the status quo is your bread and butter as a product consultant, so jump right in! Start small, start with simple concepts, bring with you tons of examples from your past product experience, success stories that resonate with client. Sneak into their existing ways of working one meeting at a time, one mail at a time, one ceremony at a time. Do not expect to come in and swipe them away with your Agile preaching as it probably won’t work. They need tangible results and they need to trust your leadership. This requires time and effort.

Tip #3 : Find the data!

Once trust is built and your team is on your side, it is time to start tackling the product.

How do you do that? Where do you start when you have no map or compass? Easy (or so we thought). Numbers!

In reality, one of the most complex aspects of shaping products as a consultant is the lack of background information, connections to departments and access to sources of information, which could be crucial to an healthy benchmarking of the product you are about to engage with. In most cases, there IS data somewhere, research done by someone, business cases or market sizing handled by some department; just YOU have no idea where this information sits and who is owning it. Well, don’t despair, this is why they hired you! If they had it all figured out probably they wouldn’t be needing a product strategist to begin with! So stop complaining and start digging! Before touching your first line of code or starting your first user interview you MUST find, collect, analyse and review all relevant data, information, piece of research or asset which could be beneficial to your product assessment. Once you find it, you are not done yet; now is the time to digest it all and present it back in a way which can be usable to shape an initial product direction (I wouldn't call it strategy just yet, but at least a potential initial objective to use as a starting point to build up knowledge, research and user segmentation).

Tip #4 : Low hanging fruits are probably rotten AKA aim for a middle term strategic win

Now that i got your attention with an extreme statement… Of course not all quick wins are bad. Of course we should grab the opportunity to fix and implement change fast. Is this the only purpose of an iterative approach? By all means NO. We need to learn to work on multiple levels and establish a lean roadmap focused on quick wins but also more strategic medium term goals, which are still very different from the multi year milestones our client is used to, but more tangible and more strategically appealing than a banner positioned differently on a landing page, impacting only one metric.

Finding a decent balance between these two levels of impact will be a key aspect of your role as product consultant, in order to gain traction across stakeholders and prove your value throughout the project.

Tip #5 : Empower your champions to elevate product in the organisation

One day, once your work is done and the product delivery is completed, you will be (hopefully) moving on to your next adventure, leaving the client to its own destiny. Sad.
I have led clients and product teams for companies where i ended up feeling like at home, like an employee and like a respected product leader within a group of likeminded people, with no difference anymore between employer and hired resource. And this is where the magic happens. So, make sure, before leaving, to instil the spark in your main product stakeholders on client side to perpetuate product mindset and all its beautiful practices across the organisation so that more ambassadors and champions will rise before you are out of the building. This is not only a great gift to your immediate colleagues, but also to the product you have helped shaping and driving. Products benefit from organisations which are cross functionally open, risk friendly and aware of the tremendous potential of disruptive mindset and open exchange of opinions. You need a quick way to do it? Start demoing your product with a much broader audience than just your team or immediate stakeholders. Get the organisation excited about the possibilities and make sure you structure a solid feedback loop where all departments can potentially share their opinion on the product and get listened too. More work for the team? Sure. But this will grant long term traction and maybe more squads to look at product approach as a viable, effective way of doing business. Enjoy!