Ann Bender of Cox Automotive: Product Management is Being Uncomfortable
Be open to the discomfort of ambiguities and being challenged, shared Ann Bender, Director of Product, UX, Research & Analytics at Cox Automotive , for my interview series Austin Voice Of Product. Our interview has been edited for clarity.
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Austin VOP #109
What was your path to product management?
I became interested in the emerging technology space when I was an undergrad studying communications. I thought that there are ways people want to communicate beyond email and I wanted to learn more about the ways that technology could address this. That inspired me to go to grad school in Human Centered Interactive Design to learn how you solve problems that people or businesses have. I was inspired by how you can layer in technology to solve problems that people don’t even know they have as a way to improve their lives and make things more efficient, better and delightful. When I was finishing my thesis, my committee chair encouraged me to interview with a local corporation that was looking for usability experts to join their learning and development team. The funny thing: I was anti-corporate America and did not want to be a poster child for being a sell-out to a big bureaucratic organization. I wanted to make the world a better place and I thought, you can’t do that if you leave your soul at the door.
Well, this company was Best Buy where Brad Anderson was CEO and he was leading the charge about customer centricity. This business strategy was revolutionary in the early 2000s. I was really passionate about problem solving and I got to apply my lens of design thinking and iterating to find ways to deliver something to be amazingly efficient for the end user. It was like walking into Disneyland and I recognized everything I had previously thought about corporate America, clearly I was wrong. It was the most vibrant workplace I have ever experienced. Ideas were free flowing and people were experimenting and they were all focused very clearly on specific problems that were rooted in customer needs.
Fast forward fifteen years later and I am still somehow on the corporate career path. Part of why I have chosen to work for all the companies I have been in is because after the recession these businesses started these complex digital transformation efforts that evolved the traditional business analyst and project manager roles to become infused with product management and agile concepts. It was phenomenal to watch unfold, l and I said to myself — I am here for this. I did not realize that I could be part of these big transformational and corporate innovation efforts that I was initially negative about, in a way that would actually resonate with the core of who I am and what I want to do.
Around 2008, I began to look for jobs that were specific product management roles. The interesting thing about those transformational projects was that I was exposed more deeply to different functional groups. Companies like Best Buy and Target made sure that you worked in different areas to gain a holistic view of how the business operated and to truly understand what our customers needed, all the way from inventory purchasing to post-transacation customer service support. I got to mirror that diversity and range with product management because the role sits at the center of orchestration for all of these things to come together in service of customer problems and the business outcomes on top of it. It has really been an exciting process to look back on. It was not the path I intended but somehow all the stars aligned and the universe said — you enjoy this, we will put these things in front of you to carve your path.
What advice do you give to aspiring product leaders?
I go back to what has become Simon Sinek’s quintessential question — What is your why? I always ask people when they are excited about getting into product management: why — what is it that really drives you? It has to be more than because you like the title or you think they do cool things in the role. You have to spend time reflecting on what the passion point is that is driving you. These passion points should be specifically related to problem solving, customer needs, pioneering and exploring the unknown, or being really curious about learning more about why people do the unsaid things they do. When you identify an interest point that you are passionate about, you can excel at that in product management. For example, do you get excited about realizing that the things you are on a path to discover could reshape your initial assumptions?
Product Managers are the glue that come in to orchestrate and lead the path forward. Out of chaos can come amazingly brilliant innovative things.
But you need to be a leader for that. You need to come in and develop a very strong point of view based on your initial understanding but hold it loosely enough so that as you continue to explore you are open to insights and other signals and can incorporate them into a refined point of view. I find that with new product managers, they can sometimes take a little bit too much of a back seat in the point-of-view department because you are working with loud, noisy customers and stakeholders and everybody has an agenda and priorities.
Being uncomfortable is a big thing. You have got to be able to say — here are my assumptions — and be okay with being challenged.
Because you have to realize that those challenges and additional points of feedback you pick up along the way are going to make you smarter, stronger and put you in a better position to lead your teams to build the right thing that is actually going to make a difference for a customer. This as opposed to saying, hey, we’ve identified one way to build this solution and we are just going to crank it out. As the solution develops you have to be sure you understand exactly what it is impacting and if it is in fact addressing the problem you set out to solve. Once it gets to the market it’s important to reflect on the activities you worked through to allow the process to have space to breathe, learn, iterate, and lead to the right outcome for the customer.
What have you read/watched/listened to that has inspired you lately?
I had the opportunity to sit in a session yesterday where Simon Sinek was talking about the infinite mindset and it was so inspiring. He was not specifically talking about product, but his message was that you can’t deliver anything on your own and that really resonated with the product manager in me. In our work we are always working with other people and everything boils down to relationships and the trust that you are instilling with your partners, your credibility, your competency, your vision of what can be possible. He talked about the critical responsibility of leaders to trust their teams and the courage required to lead and create and sustain that trust. He mentioned that he’s seen COVID become a trust erosion factor because it has removed a lot of the “in between meetings” interactions that are so important for building and nurturing trust. Team trust develops in those moments of in between stuff when you are not saying — look at my slide deck or here is a word doc we are going to review because we are almost acting on a stage when doing that. We’re not truly engaging with people as people in those situations. We are focused on getting tasks done. His call was that leaders need to go above and beyond right now to make time to check in with people individually right as opposed to ending the zoom call and just going back to whatever you were doing. The danger in this is not realizing we’re missing those opportunities to deepen and embed the trust that is needed to drive high performance teams. It was a very inspirational talk.
There are a few books that I have been revisiting recently. On The Edge by Alison Levine — she was the captain of the first US women’s expedition to Everest. She writes about the lessons and leadership principles she learned and applied while preparing to climb and summit Mt. Everest. I got so inspired by it because there are so many parallels to product management in the strategies and creativity she used to build trust between people.
The next book is Right Stuff, Wrong Sex by Margaret A. Weitekamp This book is about the first women in the space program. I got into this as I was following Wally Funk’s story as she prepared for her trip to space. She is 82 years old and was a passenger on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin recently. Her back story is fascinating. She was one of the ace astronauts in the 50s and 60s, but as a woman they would not let her go up in space even though she knocked all the tests out of the park.It is inspiring because I think of the teams that I work with or my friends and family members that feel disheartened sometimes because they don’t feel like they are achieving their dreams on the timelines they’ve set for themselves. Wally’s story is all about showing us that we need to keep chasing our dreams and stay in touch with our passions because there’s no expiration date for when they may actually happen. Keep focused on what you want and it can be pretty amazing what can eventually accomplish.
What is exciting about the product you are working on now?
One of the things that I love and why I actively pursued choosing to work for Cox Automotive is that it is known for introducing game changing and revolutionary products to the automotive industry. Their overarching promise and commitment is to transform the way the world buys and sells cars. They are a private company that owns twenty-six brands like Kelley Blue Book and AutoTrader. This brand collective supports the full end-to-end scope of dealer operations for automotive purchases. When consumers buy online, they start at the top of the funnel where they start their research and then progress through different touchpoints which eventually leads to the transaction. Automotive lags behind the typical e-commerce shopping model. There are several factors that play into this, but a lot of it ties back to desire from dealers to establish connections and in-person relationships with whoever is buying from them. There has also been hesitancy from dealers over the years to fully embrace a lot of the online technologies and advancements that have been available to moving more of their business online because it is fundamentally changing how they operate. The industry is ripe for innovation and what has been fascinating is that Covid has actually accelerated the dealers’ willingness to change. Customers are demanding that buying a car becomes as easy as all their other online shopping experiences. Then with the Covid additive, it is not just about demanding a better experience, but requiring it because of social distancing factors.
One of the products I work on has a big role in this automotive digital retailing evolution. It is to make sure that vehicle incentives, discounts and promotions are consistently represented throughout the online to in-store journey. This is familiar territory to anyone with a traditional e-commerce background as price transparency is table stakes to win the customer. Car shoppers similarly want transparency in the price of what is featured with a vehicle online so they know what the purchase or payment will ultimately cost them. If that price is not accurate, it erodes trust and confidence in their decision to purchase. Car dealers get a bad rap and pricing discrepancies do them no favors. They are often in the customer service hall of shame because people have this general feeling that they are always being hoodwinked in some capacity. We want to help dealers improve that perception. Our product research around incentives found that the typical automotive path to purchase includes twenty-six different touch-points, seventeen of which are online. Fifteen of those seventeen touchpoints are powered by Cox Automotive products. So there are fifteen opportunities to potentially misrepresent incentives data and the final price point in some way. And the thing about all of these Cox Auto products is that they were not created from a baseline to be part of an enterprise — some were homegrown, some were acquisitions. So we are going through an incredibly complex enterprise transformation process to standardize and connect all of these different products so that we can offer our dealers a seamless experience to support their car shoppers with consistently accurate information in the entire journey. The consumer wants and needs to see a consistent and transparent final price point at every step of their shopping process because it is a huge part of their decision making.
The critical importance of incentives in the price transparency of a vehicle for OEMs, car dealers, and car shoppers — and how inconsistent the experiences are around them today — has been one of the most fascinating things I’ve learned in my time in the automotive industry. The problem my team is solving is to make sure these incentives datasets, which are pricing factors, are consistently available and accurately displayed across all of Cox Auto’s products. This means that car shoppers and dealers will accurately and consistently see the most current information about the incentives that are available on a specific vehicle at every touchpoint in the shopping journey. This bolsters confidence for the consumer and increases their trust to buy from a dealer who is talking to them about the same price points they saw in their research instead of saying — I can’t even get a straight answer about what the actual price is, I am moving on to buy from somewhere else.
How might we build a stronger product community in Austin?
I moved to Austin from the Bay Area and I thought that the meetups, learning opportunities and newsletters were extraordinary when I got here. What I am looking forward to once we get past Covid is to start doing in-person activities again. I got to meet some great folks for the couple of meetups that I was able to attend before Covid. I would like to get back to when we are making those direct interactions and in-person connections — I am missing that right now. It will be great to have events to bring together product leaders or product managers around specific areas that they are interested in; hear from peers that are experts for more opportunities to learn as well as network and connect. I appreciate the online events that are available, but I know that I can speak for myself and my team — by the end of the day we are exhausted and do not want to get online again.
Last question, what is your favorite product?
It is a funny one because I never thought I would be so excited about my yard. I am a recent transplant to Austin and bought a new house just as Covid shut things down. Once I moved in I thought I needed to do some yard work because I did not know if I was ever going to leave the house again. I had a new sprinkler system installed — Rachio Smart Sprinkler — and this product is amazing. It is the easiest thing I have ever used in my life. And it is smart. It knows the types of plants that you put in, the type of soil you have, which season you’re in and therefore how much water is needed and when. It is so intelligent, once set up it truly runs on its own and is so easy to manage. I have to tell you the user interface is delightful — I mean I get actual joy using it. It is super intuitive if you ever need to get into the app and make adjustments. It has solved a problem that I never knew I had. I was out of the house for a few days and had to water the new sod in the backyard at specific times and guess what I could do while I was away — adjust from the app — brilliant! It has improved my life in such a way that was totally unexpected and I just smile about it because using it makes me happy.
Thank you, Ann!
Austin VOP is an interview series with current and future product leaders to inspire the next generation of product leaders.
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