Ms James spoke recently at a Parity Consulting seminar entitled ‘How product managers can lead disruptive innovation’.
If product managers are rewarded based on the sales performance of their current products, they have no incentive to create new products, she said.
“If I was the CEO of a large organisation, I would take all product managers and have them all have the exact same KPIs,” said Ms James.
“There always needs to be a number in everyone’s KPI, but it needs to be today’s number and tomorrow’s number as well. Too many silos lock people into just driving revenue and it stifles innovation,” said Ms James.
The reason smaller companies are better at innovating and creating ‘disruptive’ products is because the chief executive, not the product manager, is responsible for the revenue ‘number’, said Ms James.
“You’ve got to design the larger organisations so that they look like the little ones and you don’t get that ‘lock in’,” she said.
