Quit Whining … Ask for the Authority

I constantly hear product managers and product marketing managers whining that they carry all the responsibility for their product but they don’t have the authority to direct anyone to do anything.  They call themselves “Product Janitors”.

Also, they have to beg for the budgets to be assigned and spent according to their product market strategy.

Instead of whining … ask for the authority!

Here is my story and why I say you should ask and can get the authority for your product.

I was recruited from my then current position as Apple’s Mass Storage Planning Manager to become the newest Apple /// Group Product Manager following Steve Jobs and Trip Hawkins (founder of Electronic Arts).  Three weeks into my job, the company’s Executive Committee went on a “retreat” to Pajaro Dunes in Monterey County from which they sent out telegrams to the Apple /// suppliers cancelling all orders.  Bob Cummings, a product manager who worked for me and had come to product management from marketing, called me at my Division’s offsite planning meeting and asked why the Apple /// product line had been cancelled.

I didn’t know even though I was the Apple /// Group Product Manager.

I called the Personal Computer Systems Division (PCS) co-manager Paul Dali out of the meeting and asked him.  He didn’t know either.  Strange that I and the Division Manager responsible for the product line were not consulted on the end of life of their product, the current state of the product and the future of the product line.

Turns out that even though Macintosh was years away from becoming the business computer the Apple /// already was, Steve Jobs was hell bent on clearing out the market from all competition.  He convinced the executive committee in Pajaro Dunes to cancel the product line without any further consideration.

Here is the rest of the story from my upcoming book:  “Building Insanely Great Products: The Story of Why Many Products Fail and a Few Succeed”.

My 75 square foot office cubicle located in the triangular building alongside Highway 280 and Stevens Creek Blvd had a dogleg in it. Perfect to practice my putting game since, after all, my product line had been canceled and I didn’t have a clue as to what I should be doing next.

A few weeks later I was coming out of the Maraini building which is located across DeAnza Boulevard from the current Apple complex. The PCS division marketing manager Ida Cole  (future Microsoft VP International) ran out and grabbed me and said that John wanted to talk to me. I said “John who?”  She said John Sculley the president of Apple wanted to talk to me.   She escorted me back into the building and towards his office.

Sitting down in his conference room,  John was holding a super VisiCalc spreadsheet (which ironically only ran on the Apple /// as did most of Apple’s business … the product he had recently cancelled).

He sat at the head of the table. I was to his left. To my left was the CFO Joe Graziano (later Apple’s and Sun’s CFO), across the room was Del Yocam (future Apple President) and to his side was Ida.

John looked at the spreadsheet and looked at me and said “Dave we have $20 million worth of piece parts for the Apple /// spread around the world from our manufacturing facilities in Singapore and in Dallas. What should we do about it? he asked.

I said “what do you mean We, Paleface”.

He looked at me and didn’t laugh. I said don’t you know the story? He said no.

I said back in the 50s there was a famous television show called the “Lone Ranger” and the joke goes that the Lone Ranger and Tonto were riding through the desert and got surrounded by 10,000 yelling screaming bloodthirsty Indians. The Lone Ranger turns to Tonto, his trusty Indian sidekick and said “we are here in the desert, just the two of us surrounded by 10,000 yelling screaming bloodthirsty Indians and all they want to do a scalp us. What should we do Tonto?” Tonto said,  “What do you mean ‘we’ paleface!”.

I then proceeded to explain to John that I had tried to impact the sales of Apple ///s but the way we were structured it was nearly impossible.   He was holding me responsible for the Apple ///, but I had to take my promotion plans to a divisional merchandising group which in turn would take it to a corporate merchandising group which in turn would take it to corporate retail sales group which in turn would take it to a corporate sales interface group which in turn would talk to the principals of the manufacturing reps which in turn would take it to their salespeople and then to the principals of the dealers who in turn might deliver the message to the salespeople on the retail floor.

I said you know what it’s like “pushing a wet noodle?”

John asked what could we do about it.

I said give me the authority for the Apple /// product line and we will do it.

He said like a independent business unit? I said yes recalling the stories of the “Soul of a New Machine”, the IBM PC and Kelly Johnson’s Lockheed “Skunk Works”.  Just like a Hewlett-Packard Division put as close to the customer as possible.

He said that while he was at Pepsi, in Connecticut, a neighbor of his was the president of Xerox. John said that he had a Canon Personal Copier on his desk and wondered why Xerox didn’t have a similar product. The Xerox president said that they put 100 of their best people on building such a product and they’re still not done.  Canon had assigned a product team of 10 and shipped a product faster and better than what Xerox could do even though Xerox owned the world of copying.  John asked me if that’s what I was suggesting we do. I said yes.

He said make me a proposal.

On July 15, 1983 I presented our business plan for the Apple /// to Apple’s executive committee. But Steve Jobs is not there for fear he would disrupt the proceedings. The plan I presented was prepared by a core group of a dozen people with the inputs of over 70 others throughout the company. We covered all aspects in the 80-page business plan of marketing, engineering and sales. We identified alternatives that the executive committee could consider. And contrasted them in a couple of matrices against company goals and, as Maxine Graham, an Apple // and Apple /// marketeer and a member of the group that drafted Apple’s values suggested, against Apple values.  What we did is an excellent example of what my partner Mike Connor talks about when companies are going through a digital transformation today.

One of the options we proposed is let the product line continue and let customers decide if they want to continue to buy the Apple ///. Another option was to shut the product line down immediately. A key turning point in the meeting occurred when Floyd Kvamme, executive vice president of marketing and sales,  asked me what I would do if I got a call from the dealer and either of these options have been selected. I said “if you let the customer decide on the future of the product line, I would tell the dealer to go sell the product until we are unable to sell anymore”.

If you decide to just shut the product line down,  I’ll give the dealer your phone number Floyd!”

The Apple Executive Committee burst into laughter.  Somehow we convinced them that the best thing for the company, its customers and its values was to give the product (with a new organizational structure) a chance.

A few days later I got a call from Ken Zerbe, now the former general manager of Apple Europe, who was returning to take over his old position as Apple CFO. Ken suggested that I might know a little bit about the Apple /// and asked me if I would be its business unit manager (BUM).   I said yes and was given a headcount for 17 people and a budget of $4 million.  I could sign for $200K at a time.  No questions asked.

To make a long story short, our team spent the next 11 months selling 23,000 Apple ///s, generating over $60 million in revenue with a $20 million profit for Apple. We then shut down the product line the day the Apple IIc was introduced so that Wall Street wouldn’t notice.

We transitioned our 500 developers to Guy Kawasaki so they could write software and build peripherals for the Macintosh. Many of the Mac’s first programs and a large number of companies were able to continue as a result of that transition to obsolescence that the Apple /// team implemented.

A very successful end of product lifecycle.

At that point in history, the Apple /// had been the third most popular personal computer in the world after the Apple II and the DEC PDP 11. Our little Apple /// Division, at the time, was bigger than Compac.  Not bad for a computer its 75,000 owners loved but whose existence has been constantly derided as a failure.

Lesson Learned:  Give the decision maker the budget authority, hold him/her responsible and then get the hell out of the way!  The results will be astonishing.

If your product or product line faces a similar situation, Get a Free Presentation You can Use to Get the Authority to Manage Your Product.  It is all ready for you to customize with your specific situation.

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