Business == Executive Management
By: Adam Gillespie
Tags: Flatiron School, Music, Orchestra, Product Management, Software Engineering

Last but not least in my trip around the Product Management Venn diagram is the Business area! From the PM side of the equation, this often looks like reporting on an implemented feature or product outcomes. In some companies, the business area can also be the source of new feature ideas and “north star” (the main metric of success for the product and/or team), while in others it is a bottom-up structure where the PM is identifying the features that customers desire, and are then charged with selling them to the company leaders. In either scenario, there is this sort of required ability to be able to stand up for your product and present tangible evidence as to why it is relevant.

This distilled idea of being the spokesperson for your product really speaks to me in relation to Artistic Planning. For example, during a given season there are many open days in the calendar where you could utilize the orchestra's time to produce a single performance of a concert (often referred to as a “special”). One of my favorite concerts like this would be the ever-popular movies with a live orchestra. These blockbuster films are performed in real-time with the soundtrack being played by the professional orchestra (fun right?!). They often can be huge moneymakers but do come with inherent risks as many of them have instrumentation that requires a lot of performers (more musicians == more money) and not a small amount of technology (projectors, movie screens, sounds equipment, etc.), all the while asking your audience to watch a movie they’ve already seen for a much steeper ticket price.

In order to convince Senior Management, it is the job of the Artistic Planner to first identify a movie that has an adequate following and then balance that with the costs to perform, while making best guesses on the potential gross ticket sales. While net revenue is often an ideal tool to convince an executive, it is also important for an Artistic Planner to evaluate how the performance serves the organizational mission. Often artistic altruism is an easier sell to your executives (and orchestra) than revenue and potential ticket sales.

There is something to be said about this idea of artistic altruism and its relevance to the tech industry. More and more you see companies popping up with mission statements that are created with awareness of how their products/services impact the world (Duolingo or Square, for example). As I continue to pontificate on the overlapping of Artistic Planning and Product Management, I wonder if one could learn a little from one another. I would love to see the professional orchestra sector abandon some of its altruistic efforts for those of sustainable revenue streams, and more tech companies and product teams unapologetically run toward mission-driven product ideas that could potentially change the world. Perhaps a naive viewpoint?

Please reach out on LinkedIn and let me know what you think!

For next week, I’m going to start diving into my design process from an engineering point of view and discuss the importance of having a clear end product in mind from the start.

TL;DR Business Leaders in Tech == Executive Management in Professional Orchestras