Welcome to the Stage: Michael Harrison
Head of Product Management at Fleetio and 2015 Venture for America Fellow
Startup Spotlight: Fleetio
Fleetio is a Birmingham based B2B SaaS company focused on building a cloud-based software that helps organizations around the world track, analyze and improve their fleet operations. They’re passionate about making it easy to manage a fleet so our customers can spend more time focusing on their mission. Fleetio was founded by Tony Summerville back in 2012 and has since grown to over 90 employees working in Birmingham and remote nationwide.
Meet Michael Harrison, Head of Product Management at Fleetio
Michael is the Head of Product Management at Fleetio, a cloud-based fleet management platform that helps fleets across the world manage vehicle maintenance, utilization, inspections, costs, and more. Originally from Raleigh, North Carolina, Michael graduated from NC State University with a degree in industrial engineering and was then selected as a Venture for America fellow. This two-year entrepreneurship fellowship connected him to Fleetio, and he relocated to Birmingham, Alabama to join their team in 2015. He has seen the company grow from 6 to 90 employees since then. Outside of work, Michael is a freelance photographer, the co-founder/director of a junior golf event - the Webb Simpson Challenge, and a volunteer computer science teacher at Woodlawn High School in Birmingham.
*Michael was also born in Cincinnati and is one of the few fellow Reds fans that I can count on for support down here in Birmingham.
1. What's been the biggest challenge you've faced in your current role?
As product teams scale, the most critical challenge is figuring out how to stay fast. The natural shift is for a bigger team to have increased overall output with decreased velocity per person. If you think of recklessness and thoroughness on a spectrum when you’re smaller, you can afford to fall more toward the former, but when you have an established brand and customer base, the consequences of the “move fast and break things” methodology are much higher. You feel like you need more consensus, more research, and more time to react to customer feedback and market changes. We’ve had to work hard to combat these growing pains. We’re continually splitting our product and engineering teams into smaller and smaller squads in order to keep our builders right next to the problem they’re solving while also giving them the autonomy to make their own decisions. In a paradoxical way, my job is often to introduce more structure, processes, and tools in order to help our team function like a small team.
2. Is there someone or something that you rely on to get through the tough days?
My faith and my family have always been my steadying forces, and that is no different these days, but I will acknowledge that the people at Fleetio make it easy to stay above water even when work itself is tough. I spend a lot of time with our Product Managers especially, and they’re just a genuinely fun group of people to be around. We’re pretty quick to make fun of ourselves or lament situations together; that makes it pretty easy to keep things in perspective.
3. How has your role evolved over the last few years?
Even though we’re a product-centric company, the biggest catalyst (or inhibitor) for our growth as a company is our skill (or deficiency) at adding and developing people. So my responsibility has shifted a lot from building a product to building a team, which is still a transition I’m getting used to. I’ve had to shift my focus toward high-leverage activities. Many of the tasks I’ve done for years at Fleetio as an individual contributor to the product are no longer as efficient. My time would be more impactful if it were spent recruiting, coaching, or helping someone else execute. It’s a fun challenge. In the same way that I love products for what they can empower in the people they touch, I find it fulfilling trying to bring the best out of the people around me as a leader.
4. How has Fleetio been able to remain competitive in an increasingly competitive environment?
One of my favorite cultural ethics at Fleetio is our willingness to re-litigate processes, tools, and decisions from the past. What worked for us yesterday may not work for us tomorrow, and we’re constantly asking ourselves how we can improve and meet the needs of the season we’re in. This works wonders to remove ego from company procedures, and it also serves us well in product development. Once you find success as a product company, it’s so tempting to fall in love with your vision of the market you’re in and the hyper-polished product roadmap you’ve created. But we find that we have to frequently uproot our plans in the wake of new information. When you do that, it can feel like flakiness, but if you’re obsessively focused on customer outcomes rather than features, you worry less about the steadiness of your roadmap and more about the pain you’re solving for the market you serve.
Interested in learning more? Check out fleetio.com
Their team is also growing and hiring, so make sure to check out their careers page here