SOT Consulting was established in 2017 and today works with a wide range of businesses from start-ups through scale-ups to multinational companies. Founder Phil Hornby tells unLTD all about SOT’s approach
Who we are
SOT Consulting are experts in Product Management, applying entrepreneurial approaches and building high-performing teams.
After nearly 20 years as a corporate ‘warrior’ working with start-ups in my spare time, I decided to help other businesses more directly and established SOT. We are based just outside Chesterfield, but travel all over the world helping companies.
Have you heard of Product Management?
What we see is that most people fit into two camps when it comes to Product Management. The minority know all about it, have a team in-place and are seeing the benefits.
The majority, on the other hand, have little to no idea what Product Management is.
Product Management is a strategic role that drives cross-functional working to deliver customer and business value – and not to be confused with Project Management, which often acts as a partner driving execution.
An open secret to success
Product Management is quite an established role, originating in 1931 at Procter and Gamble, as well as finding an early home in technology businesses at HP. But the key is, it started in the US and has only gradually filtered out to the rest of the world.
It’s not just for big companies, though. If you look at Silicon Valley start-ups the first full-time Product Manager is before hire number ten, while in Europe it’s closer to 34. Product Managers are a key part of driving success, and perhaps part of their secret sauce.
Cross-functional teams
The holy grail of every organisation is to build and maintain high-performing teams. There are many recent insights into this area from the likes of Google, and we bring these to play. But closer to home the tools developed by researcher and management consultant Dr Meredith Belbin is a powerful technique we apply to understand team behaviour.
Like any sports team there is a captain, this is the Product Manager.
Modern product teams work cross-functionally. They include everyone needed to successfully deliver, from design to development, marketing to operations.
Entrepreneurial mindset
Delivering the right thing for customers is becoming harder, even as it is becoming easier to create products. The old ‘If we build it, they will come’ mindset just doesn’t deliver optimal results anymore.
Experimentation and discovery are key, enabling teams to learn what customers really want before building fully functional offerings, saving money and delivering better outcomes – faster.
We can help you
Do you want to deliver next level customer and business value? Then get in touch, and we will help you build a cross-functional product team with an entrepreneurial mindset to drive you success.
Get in touch
Phil Hornby can be contacted on 07919 204542, email phil.hornby@sotconsulting.com
Visit www.sotconsulting.com for more information on how we can help you deliver more customer and business value.
