Ryan Donovan on Driving Product & Engineering Success, B2B Leadership, and PLG

Product State Q&A

Ryan Donovan is a SaaS Advisor, Coach, & Fractional Executive. He was formerly Chief Product & Technology Officer at GRIN, Hootsuite, and Sitecore — and previously served in roles at Microsoft, Smith Commerce, and Publicis Sapient.
Website / LinkedIn

EC: What’s the key to hiring and leading both Product and Engineering teams?

RD: I come from the somewhat unique position of having led product AND engineering teams simultaneously for the last 21 years — making me a CPTO before this title actually became an industry trend.

My north star has always been the customer. The way that manifests itself in hiring and day-to-day leadership.

I’ll start with Engineering, as that has remained more constant. I’ve always made sure to hire for strong customer empathy and creative problem solving skills, especially when it comes to coming up with answers when extreme constraints are applied. What you do not want is building technology for the sake of building technology. As a leader, I’ve had to deal with the consequences of over-engineering and bizarre technology choices on far too many occasions. A creative engineering team that understands and has deep empathy for the customer will focus on solving their problems in the most expeditious manner possible and remember that they are in the business of solving customer problems, not building core horizontal technical IP (those who want to do that should probably be working for Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc.).

For Product, the game has evolved to include far more stakeholders than it used to have – including looking at product usage itself. The hiring bar for product used to be great communication skills, extraordinary customer empathy, phenomenal prioritization skills, and the ability to drive projects cross-functionally. All of that still applies. Deep skills in data analytics are also required now in order to properly analyze data. Going forward, using AI will also likely become a table stake within a few years. And, for what it’s worth, I’ve always found those coming from customer roles (e.g. Practitioner -> Field -> PM) are equally, if not more effective, than those who have been career PMs.

By the way, the scope of product management is anything that touches the product.

EC: What is important for new PMs to understand about how B2B software development had evolved over the past two decades?

RD: B2B software used to be just about following the customer. Most B2B software products existed in sales-led organizations with high-touch customer success and/or professional services. Between direct customer feedback and field feedback, product managers could be quite effective at building a roadmap that would drive sales and retention.

The world has shifted materially since then. The world of small/medium businesses used to be somewhat off-limits — now this is a ripe and fertile ground thanks to the introduction of self-serve / product-led-growth (PLG) models permeating the world of B2B.

In today’s age, a successful B2B product manager must triangulate a variety of feedback including traditional direct qualitative channels but also now that includes detailed analytics of in-product usage, especially in lower-touch or PLG models.

EC: What can tech companies of all sizes and ages learn from adopting PLG principles?

RD: No matter what segment one is in, PLG principles can provide valuable insights and aid in decision making. Every product has its own adoption funnels and growth loops. And points of abandonment or confusion in the user experience. Utilizing in-product analytics to meticulously analyze user behaviour — and help move customers to the desired points faster through in-product experience — will benefit greatly, regardless of their business model.

In fact, this can become a competitive advantage by ensuring that value is realized faster than the competition, especially in businesses with high human touch and requisite costs.

“My north star has always been the customer. The way that manifests itself in hiring and day-to-day leadership.”
- Ryan Donovan