Neha Shah of Accurent: Product Managers Dare To Be Creative

We have to take ideas and connect them in ways that people thought were impossible before, shared Neha Shah, Senior Product Manager at Accruent, for my interview series Austin Voice Of Product. Our interview has been edited for clarity.

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Austin VOP #93

What was your path to product management?

I have been interested in technology ever since I was a little girl. My dad worked for IBM for many years, and retired from Oracle a couple of years ago. So technology has always been an important part of my life. My first job out of college was in the healthcare tech space in an account management role. I then moved into technology policy focused on wireless spectrum allocation, smart grid, and cybersecurity. I would venture to say even in a policy role, I was exposed to different facets of what makes a successful product or an idea happen. Because it is not just about having a great idea, building it, and then hoping customers will find it. I was learning about how you need to connect with customers and give them the experience they are looking for, how to build the human touch into the product.

I eventually found myself in the Bay Area and my first “product management” job. This was a six-person startup and we were building a solution to tackle infant health and early childhood education. Even though my title was “Business Development”, I wore multiple hats, and in retrospect, covered many responsibilities of a product manager: understand the market, the problem, our customers, what segments, and what specific features we needed to build. And at that point, I did not see myself as a product manager because I was under the impression that to qualify as a product manager, you have to be an engineer first. I assumed you must have some kind of technical background and training. It was only more recently with the help of coaches and just talking to people in the industry that I realized that product management is something that I enjoy, and am actually good at.

I am a customer-first person. I want to understand people’s stories. I did not see how those connected together until someone advised me to consider product management because of my experience working in product marketing and sales. They told me that a lot of the questions I asked and pondered about are “product” questions .So, it was not a straightforward path, but then again, how many people have one to get to product management!

What advice do you give to aspiring product leaders?

I think we have an idea in our head about what a successful product manager or product leader’s qualifications should be. But now I have learned, it all depends on the solution you are trying to build and the team you have. I think back to my observation five-seven years ago that Product was a very technical field, so you just need to have an engineering background. Now, technology is entering almost every part of our human experience. As the human experience evolves, we need product managers to evolve too. We have to take ideas and really connect them in ways that people thought were impossible before. And that’s where creativity comes in.

As product managers, we need to dare to be creative.

I believe you should follow certain models and best practices as a foundation, but we should not be beholden to them to the point where we don’t dare to be different. I also think many of us are reluctant or afraid to consider ourselves “creative” — I shared this in my ProductCamp Austin presentation.

I think you can find great product talent anywhere. And this goes to the very heart of the diversity challenges we have in tech. I think for too long we have assumed there is a certain stereotype that fits the product manager mold.

And the more technology is being used to address human problems, the more we need to diversify the people who are building the right solutions. A product that’s meant to solve 80% of the world’s problems is being built by a small group of people — that is just not a good way of building products.

You need someone who gets the problem, maybe has lived with the problem. I think, frankly, the only way we are going to address this is by questioning some of our previous assumptions about what the right person is for the role.

A couple of years ago I met a woman at South by Southwest. She is a former teacher and built an app that helps students in the DC area find a ride to go to school because their parents are busy and public transportation is not an option for them. Are product managers at Uber thinking about that problem? Probably, but most likely not. But a woman who is not exactly a conventional product manager was entrepreneurial and addressed this problem. And the best product leaders have this entrepreneurial mindset.

What have you read/watched/listened to that has inspired you lately?

The Austin VOP newsletter is definitely on my list, as are the newsletters from MindTheProduct, and Pragmatic Institute.

But the books I have found most helpful are actually those that help you manage the human-side of product management and product design. Being a PM is often leading without authority, and negotiating a path forward for your team/product vision with the help of others. To that end, reading ‘The Courage to Be Disliked’, and ‘Never Split The Difference’ by Chris Voss helped me sharpen my communication skills to listen, empathize with, and ultimately deliver meaningful outcomes for my product.

I also strongly believe one should look for ideas and inspiration outside of your immediate industry. For example — seeing how healthcare is tackling problems in their industry by reading books and articles by Atul Gawande, and even reading political biographies gives you insight into the very thing us product managers do daily — how to build and create something that is going to get you to your intended outcome.

What is exciting and challenging about the product you are working on now?

I find it exciting that I am bringing technology solutions to industries like government, education, and healthcare that are not first adopters of software technology. They are traditionally risk-averse, partly because of the cost-of-change as well as regulatory limitations. Specifically, I work on the centralized BI reporting platform for all the products at Accruent. There is a paradigm shift happening, especially in these sectors, and we are realizing that we cannot give customers a fragmented experience. My product is part of that unified user experience for reporting. So even if they use multiple products with us they will not have completely different reporting platforms.

The second exciting thing is that a lot of folks in these sectors we serve have used Excel spreadsheets for so long that using a BI reporting platform like ours is challenging for them. This is not just a skills and technology challenge, it is a human challenge, a culture challenge. Even when I was in Sales, I was spending a lot of time convincing my clients, my buyers: “Hey, don’t worry, this is going to be good for your numbers, your productivity, and here’s why.” Often, I think you need to sell them the idea behind it rather than the actual product. Of course, you still need to make sure the product is solving their key problems, because otherwise you have a trust gap.

It is easy to focus on certain markets that seem glamorous and glitzy and get popular attention. But I think the work happening on the ground to slowly introduce technology to demographics that may not be technology forward is the real challenge.

How might we build a stronger product community in Austin?

I think for anyone new to the product community in Austin, the first feeling you have is there are so many places you can go to connect with folks, but which one is right for you. It feels like a black box. And when you do attend a meetup or event, you are overwhelmed. Everyone has a different experience they are seeking from the community, and come from different product backgrounds. So if you are a B2B product person and you show up for a meetup at Capital Factory, nine out of ten times, you are not going to meet people who get your problems or product challenges. Or if a product person from a small early stage company comes to an event that is focused on more mature products, there is a miss that is demotivating on some level.

I wonder if there is a way within our product community where we can create micro-communities so that we can all find the right fit for the people we want to talk to at the stage of our career we are in or the type of product we are working on.

For example, if I move from B2B, where I already know the resources, people, and general lay of land, to the world of B2C, now I kind of need to start again. I would encounter the black box again, where its not exactly clear where I can connect with people that can relate to me.

Last question, what is your favorite product?

Hands down for me my favorite product these days is the Robinhood app. It has actually changed my life in so many ways since I first signed up two years ago. Also considering how one of the founders found inspiration to do this from the Occupy Wall Street protests really spoke to me. Honestly, wealth inequality is something that everyone should be thinking about, especially right now as you see so many people getting rich off the stock market during the pandemic. Only 55% of Americans even have a stake in the stock market. There’s the issue of both having limited resources to invest, but also the limited financial literacy which is why so many people get trapped in systems that exacerbate debilitating debt rather than the stability that comes with wealth creation.

Five or ten years ago, the stock market seemed impenetrable to me. I was always so intimidated by my friends who were in finance or my friends that seemed more comfortable with stock market jargon. What Robinhood changed for me was how their app-experience comfortably introduced me to world of stock-trading. They changed the barriers to entry for everyday folks to make investments, and have the access and information on how to use this wealth-making tool. They changed the system and the whole industry by getting rid of transaction fees, and their model of empowering end-users .

The first time I used the app, I was very scared about investing in the stock market. I remember growing up seeing my parents investing in stocks and they would say that if you invest, you need to read about it every day. My mom would have the equivalent of CNBC in India on the whole day. And it was so intimidating and I thought that I could never do all of that. But Robinhood is designed in a way to make this easier, with the right kind of caution of course. They let you set up notifications for a particular stock or suggest stocks for you based on categories. It is so consumable and not intimidating. All the factors that kept me from investing were gone because of the design of the product and how they present useful investment information. And that is amazing how they have built a good product to solve this problem on a macro level.

Thank you, Neha!

Austin VOP is an interview series with current and future product leaders to build a stronger product community in Austin. Please like, share and tweet this article if you enjoyed it.

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