 Welcome to today's webinar, the Foundation of Success People. My name is Robert Loster, currently Product Manager at Nike's EHQ European Headquarters, and today I would like to share my experience on how to deliver enterprise technology in a smooth way. Since we are all meeting for the first time, a couple of facts about myself. If my accent didn't give it away, I'm from Germany, and if you see in the background, this is my favorite stadium in Berlin. I'm German, however, I have a Polish background, my parents are from Poland, and I'm very proud of it. I lived in multiple countries in Europe, which I really enjoyed. I'm currently living in the Netherlands, and I have no clue where life will take me. But right now, after living in Poland, Germany, Finland, I feel very comfortable being in the Netherlands. So sit back, enjoy the presentation, and if you have questions, use the chat function, I'm happy to answer all your questions. And if a question crosses your mind after the webinar today, please feel free to reach out to me. I'm happy to help because I think sharing is caring, and that's why I'm here today. Let me start with that overview, with that quote. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. What does this mean? Sounds pretty straightforward, but if you go through the sentence, if you want to go fast, go alone. That can relate to many elements, where you think of a complex environment or a product you would like to deliver, that you can just go and deliver something, but that's not so easy. You have usually many dependencies, you have people you have to work with, and you've got to make sure that your crew is on board. When I say that, what are the elements I'm talking about? Usually, if you deliver enterprise technology, you've got to have a vision, you need the right skill set, you need incentives, you need resources, and you need an action plan. Let me just show you and explain the impact of not having one of those elements. If you don't have a vision, you are creating confusion. If you don't have the right skill set, you create anxiety. If you don't have this incentive for the technology you are delivering or the people you are working with, you create resistance. And if you don't have resources, you have frustration. And no action plan is the wrong start. You need a strong how as well to deliver something. Right? So that is why I am a firm believer in if you want to go far, go to weather. It's not always easy, but let me show you how I look at it, and I would like to share a couple of points, how to make sure that your crew is on board. Usually, if I'm facing complex topics, I try to have a triangle to divide it and make it look simple. If you look at the right hand side, there are three items which are key on the slide. Let's start with common purpose. Having a common purpose usually helps to align the organization or the team you are working with in a certain direction. You can always start with having clear problems. Outline the problems you are facing in the organization or the problems you are trying to solve in the environment or the problems you are trying to solve in the consumer interface. Right? Some people also say, fall in love with the problem. Right? Understand the problem. Be really close to it from a technology perspective. Define the internal stakeholders. Review the problem. Talk about it. Make sure everyone is on the same page. Right? Then you have the clear scope. Talk about the scope. Where do I start? Where does it end? Right? Be clear on that. And have an aligned direction. Have the problem clear. Know your stakeholders. Know the scope. Have an aligned direction. Sometimes you can even say that the aligned direction is division. What is the direction you want to go? That will help you to create common purpose. Let me go to the next layer. Setting expectations. Right? If you start a project, usually if you have the first layer clear, you need a certain skill set to deliver against the direction you want to go against your purpose. That's what you've got to make sure. Approved funding usually helps because if you have money, you have a certain chance to hire people, to bring people on board. I don't know, even create parties, have a nice environment, and have fun. Clear roles and responsibilities. Everyone should be aware what his or her role is. Be it on the squad. Be it in the business. Be it a business owner. You name it. Clear roles and responsibility. Create clarity. And then once you have all of this in place, field the team. Bring the people on board you need to work with. Explain to them the purpose you're trying to accomplish here and make sure that everyone is aligned. Talk about it. Communicate about it. And then going to the next layer. Effective governance. Usually you have a roadmap in place, which I usually see as a sequenced list of capabilities. It's not always the case that you always hit your milestones, but you prioritize the roadmap. You have a certain value drops. And when I say value drops, I mean what is landing in the hands of the consumer? What is landing in the hands of the end user? It always depends on the perspective. But that is how I look at the value drop. It needs to be a certain functionality. It needs to add value. And then also work on an operating model. What is the governance? Work with the project manager. Work with the program manager. Help to create a governance that everyone is aware of what's going on. And what's the progress? Some people use a scrum next to an effective project governance. Some people work only in a scrum with scrum ceremonies. But everything leads to an effective governance, right? Making the right progress in delivery. So again, let me quickly look at common purpose, setting expectations, effective governance. All of this can be achieved through collaboration. Collaborate on every single item on this list. Talk about it. Talk to your manager. Talk to the people you're working closely with. Talk to the engineers. Talk to the scrum master. Talk to leadership. Talk to everyone so that your message is clear. As a product manager, and that is my belief, you need to help make these kinds of things visible. Once you have all of these items in place, you're entering the delivery mode, right? And whilst if you think about it again, if you have a common purpose, you set the expectations with everyone, and you have an effective governance, you would like to make sure that the roadmap you have in place is delivered, right? And when you work with a lot of people, and in my case with a fantastic squad, we wanted to establish working principles. I usually refer to it to values. Having values everyone can relate to and understand them, right? And here's an example I would like to share from my experience. And you can change that to whatever you want. Maybe it doesn't work for you. This is just something I've been working with for the past three years, and it worked. Let me give you an example and let me elaborate on the attack framework, which came out of a lot of research, a lot of testing and just trying. So here are the values. When you work with a squad, it's not always easy, right? Priorities change, direction changes, interest changes, but overall the values need to be the same. Let me start with A. A stands for alignment. Having high alignment with the people you work with, and in my case, it was with the squad. We had to make sure that everyone understands the business priorities. What is the direction we are going? We discussed during our scrum ceremonies the tasks we are going after or the user stories. At the same time, as a product manager, you also need to make sure that you are aligned with your leadership, with the people you are working with, with the business, right? And also share progress and what's even more important is share your roadblocks, your obstacles, ask for help, right? This was something we embedded in our organization and it worked beautifully. It was really great to see. Alignment is extremely important. Trust. Everyone talks about trust and what do I mean with it? When you work with a finance squad, well, I work with finance, so that's why I call it finance squad. So when I work with our squad, we believe in our people. And that created an intrinsic feeling of empowerment. Genuine belief and genuine trust helps you to make a difference. And you will see that. Try it. If you really trust people around you, it's rewarding. You will see that. You have trust, you get trust. Hey, autonomy. If you think about autonomy, it's a huge work, right? But what I mean with autonomy in this particular case is everyone has a different working style. I'm an early riser. I have no issue jumping on a call at 8 a.m. Super easy. But some people are not early risers. They prefer to start the day late. Where I'm going with this is give people the freedom to work in an autonomous environment. Because if you provide autonomy to people, freedom in this case, freedom for me means ownership, right? And if you say, yeah, I've tried it. It didn't work. People take advantage of it. Then you have most probably hired the wrong people. So autonomy. The payback for it is people take ownership and they will surprise you. And the C, community. When it comes to a community, I can make it very simple. Community means help each other, be there for each other. At work and also if needed, outside work. Especially during this difficult times where these kind of things are important. And this is the attack framework. How we call it. At least I call it like this. And again, if you have high alignment, the direction you are going is very clear. It creates clarity. Give people trust. Having high trust will be paid back with great work. And people feel empowered. Autonomy, again, it's sort of ownership. And everyone likes to have freedom. At least that's my experience. And community. Just one more time. Having a community, having a safety net where you can vent if needed, where you have a safe environment. That is something everyone in my experience likes to be working in. And this is an overview which took me quite some time to put it on this slide. It says shield on the left-hand side where you see that people shielding each other, helping each other. On the other hand side, you have safety net. I have the pleasure to work with a very mature and experienced leadership team. And they taught me that by example. They were acting as our shield when we were in project delivery and product delivery. And they were also there for us when we were going through crisis. And I tried to translate it into the product management role. Where you have it to protect your squad. I call it to shield the squad so that they have space they can do what they are best at. Right? It's writing software, brainstorming, having design thinking sessions. You name it. Create space for the squad so that they can do what they are best at. Elevate the experts at the same time. That is helping you when you create space. And you have a safe environment where experts pick up and collaboration is fostered. And on the other hand side, and I think some of us have been there, I've been there multiple times where things are not going so great. And usually the engineers you are working with can be also frustrated. They said, hey, we tried everything. We explored every exhausted every single option. But sometimes it's not good enough. Or you don't hit your roadmap deliverables. You're over promised under deliver. So these kind of things can also happen. So what I would like to really share with this audience is be there as a safety net for your squad. Shield them, give them space so that they can collaborate, they can work on delivery, they can interact with each other. And be laser focused on goal life. And be there at the same time when things are not going great. When it's extremely difficult, when things are not working out, be the safety net. Help the team to feel comfortable. If you have a safe environment, that's where people best. And if I would look at three main areas to give back to you. And when I say give back to you, the main three takeaways for delivering enterprise technology in a smooth way is alignment is key for success. The people around you need to know what's going on. Help them to understand that communicate. Sometimes it's needed to over communicate. There to fail. Sounds simple. But it takes guts. You need to empower the people around you, especially the experts. Some people have done so many projects in their life. And they should be hurt. Genuine empowerment will help you to make the right choice, create a safe environment and make a difference. Sometimes it's just trying and experimenting nature. And it's not a bad thing to fail. It's more you get your learnings. Look at it as a learning opportunity. You failed ideally fast. You document the learnings. You review them. Talk about that. And believe me, you won't do that same mistake again. You won't make that same mistake again. And last but not least, have fun. Product management is a journey. With all its ups and downs and having the right value embedded in the squad you're working with can make an extreme difference. Thank you for joining, for tuning in. And if you have questions and if I was not clear enough or you have still doubts, if you understood things correctly, use the chat function. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to share my experience on how to deliver enterprise technology in a smooth way. Thank you.