AA211 - Communication Is Product's Only Job, OR IS IT? - Arguing Agile

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
We did a podcast where we readthe real cynical version oh,

(00:03):
I'm a burnt out product manager.
And all that matters is thatyou play golf with the CEO.
Yeah, we did.
So are we gonna delvedeeper into that today?
Yeah, I think we should do areal version of that podcast
where if we wanna be helpful tothe listeners we should probably
do a real version of that.
I agree.
And we do wanna behelpful to listeners..
Let's do that.
Well, they get since whenthey get what they pay for.

(00:27):
we did a podcastnot too long ago.
It was arguing Agile2 0 5, debating impact
versus visibility inproduct management.
Where we talked about the falsedichotomy between being good
at your job versus being seenas valuable by leadership?
Yeah.
Playing the part, right?
And being seen to play thepart, or playing the role.

(00:50):
Playing the role.
Yes.
Anytime I can get playingthe role in it makes me feel
like we're in our first 60podcast where I didn't edit
and everything was terrible.
But on this one, I wanna makea real earnest effort to help
people kind of understand that.
A way of looking at productmanagement is that communication
is your primary job.

(01:11):
if you look at productmanagement, I can easily see,
like at this point in thepodcast, I haven't decided
what side I'm gonna be on.
I think I might be on theopposite side of this, but I
could very easily see if youpeel product management all the
way back to the, the, if youtake the skin off the banana
and you peel it back first ofall you go, Ooh, my goodness,
what are we doing here?

(01:32):
But when you get done withthat I think you'll find
at the core of productmanagement is a, stripped
down business leader role onlywithout the equity of course.
Because we ain't gotno money for that.
That's right.
There's only so manyyachts to go around.
That's what I'm saying.
All the responsibilityof the founder.
None of the equity.

(01:53):
the responsibility partsof the founder, a big part
of that is communication.
Communication withusers, communication
internally, communicationwith your investors,
Stakeholders, basically.
Everybody.
Upstream, downstream.
Correct.
research shows, I'm toldthat 68% here, 68% of

(02:13):
product failure, stemfrom poor communication.
That is a completelymade up number to be 69.
I don't know.
Well, hey, you've calmed down.
Hey, calm down over there.
Yeah.
So, so today we're gonnatalk about that, right?
What is the primary role?
What is your primary,like responsibilities?
Is it communication or is itworking at the product level?
what are you doing?

(02:34):
let's start there.
let's make the claim theproduct manager, the majority of
their role, like 51%, minimum.
Minimum.
We're drawing a minimum, right?
51% communication is your role.
51%, right?
I don't think there isa book like reference to
go back to on this one.
product management,the product space.

(02:56):
Is scattered tothe winds on this.
There's no standards basically.
There's no best practices here.
surprisingly, even thoughmost of the books focus on the
tactical aspects of Productmanagement, there's still not
this kind of thing out there.
So if you are a productmanager and you are on the.
Other side, you docommunication when it's

(03:17):
needed here and there, andyou're mainly focused on
your product, you have afantastic product, right?
people don't know about it.
You're not communicatingthat out, even internally.
Internally, you have todo a lot of communication.
This is what I mean bydownstream, if you're not
doing an excellent job atthat, it doesn't matter
what your product does, itdoesn't matter how good it is.

(03:39):
I'm going to takethe opposing side.
So you'll be on the side.
That communication is clearly51 plus percent of your
time, regardless of whatevercondition you're in And
I'll be on the other side.
As crazy as it sounds thatthere is another, well,
Brian, there's another side.
How can you dare saythere's another side?
Like I would say the otherside of this is, okay,

(04:00):
some like you do need, likecommunication is something
you need to do - communicatewith stakeholders, but that's
just a tool like reducingtechnical debt, doing strategy
and planning for the future,working with your development
teams through issues,monitoring logs, gathering data!
Communications here, it's justanother tool in the toolbox.

(04:20):
sometimes you have toflex and do more of one
tool than the other.
But it's just like the claimof that's the only thing.
And then everythingelse is optional.
Well, yeah.
Not the only thing, but alarge part of what you do.
So it's not a hundredpercent we're saying,
but it's more than 51.
probably somewhere in thesixties, who knows, but probably
not in the nineties, maybe.
Right.

(04:40):
Product managers are thosetranslators between customers
internal folks, right.
Your own company, whateveryou need to, to communicate.
So if communication isnot your strong suit,
how can you succeed?
Well, first of all, ifcommunication's not your
strong suit, and you'rea product manager, you
have some issues there.
You need to look to the left andlook to the right and figure out

(05:02):
why you're working on that job.
I, I think like on your side.
I could see someone looking atthis saying well, communications
like it is important, buthow much time does that take?
I could see the finance brolike the private equity bro,
looking at you and be like,Om, I understand you're saying
communication is your mo mostimportant thing, you're just
sending some emails and stuff.
communication is alsomeaning, you're taking

(05:22):
time to decide things.
how long does it take youto actually make a decision?
Like what is that, like 10%of your time that someone
asks you to make a decisionand you make a decision?
Like, how much can, howmuch time can that take?
Making a decision itselfisn't gonna take time.
But it's the groundworkthat leads up to it.
that, cannot bedone unless you're
communicating really well.
You could still make a decisionwithout doing that, but then

(05:45):
the quality of your decisioncan be brought into question.
Right.
Well, I'd like to take a momentto point out arguing Agile
2 0 1, mastering StakeholderCommunication and Management.
Why is it not stakeholdermanagement and communica?
Anyway, it should bemastering stakeholder
communication and masteringStakeholder Management.
Management.
Yeah.
That it's two things in one,which is crazy because the

(06:09):
podcast is not even that long.
because the idea that.
just blasting out a marketingrelease takes two seconds.
that idea is great.
However, it's great forone block of the power
interest grid, which wetalked about in that podcast.
But you have three otherblocks that need more
attention So that's not enough.
And on the other sidereally focusing just on the

(06:30):
communication portion may welllead you to gravitate towards
creating endless PowerPointdecks and things like that.
There is a point at whichyou have to figure out, is
this too much information?
Sometimes less is more, This iswhere you see the six pagers or
the one pagers that people doand not the 30 page PowerPoint
deck that no one's gonna finishin a half hour meeting anyway.

(06:51):
Yeah.
So this is where , the awarenessin a product manager kicks
in, communicating, but forwhat purpose and how much
time to devote to that, howmuch energy to devote to that.
And it comes with experience.
one of the things we haven'ttalked about is your product
your story that you'retelling with your product.
Mm. the narrative of wherewe're going in the future,

(07:12):
how we got here, what painpoints we solve, and where
we're going in the future.
that's, we didn't reallytalk I know we're gonna
talk about that later.
So I don't wanna gotoo deep into it now.
Right.
But that is the part that'sessential here creating a
narrative for the product.
And building a future inpeople's minds, I'm not supposed
to be arguing against this.
I don't think I'mdoing a great job.

(07:33):
I guess if I'm arguing againstthis, I'm saying that's just
another tool in the toolkit.
you're just email blastingout these are the things we
accomplished and this is whatit unlocks for us in the future.
And letting people come toyou I'm trying to save you
the product manager time forcrafting a completely different
message every time you doa release for a different
audience and then spendingtime with that audience.

(07:55):
at that point, you won't beable to talk to customers.
All you'll be doing is drivingaround being , the hype man
of the development team.
You'll basically be doingmarketing at that point.
Yeah, exactly.
But that's the extreme, right?
So neither extreme is reallydesirable here, right?
Absolutely.
No matter how good yourproduct is, it cannot
overcome poor communication.
It just can't.
That's the takeawayfrom this category.
Your decisions on the product.

(08:17):
Like they'd be the bestdecisions in the world.
But if you don't drive themout to the proper audiences.
Again, going back to ourpodcasts on stakeholder
management, yeah.
There's a way to drive themout to different audiences
if you don't drive themout to the audiences that
need to hear the thing thatthey need to hear, again,
listen to our other podcast.
we laid out a frameworkthere for you actually
to hit all four quadrantsto tailor your release.

(08:39):
There's a way to do itwhere you're doing it
in a mass media style.
Like it doesn't takeyou a ton of time.
. But also each audience isgetting exactly what they need.
The executives are gettinghow does this help position
us with certain key customersor position us for the future?
The user, high interest,low power users.
They're getting like,here are the new features
that help you save time.

(09:00):
You know, there's a way tocraft your message depending
on the different audiences.
Go listen to that podcast.
I think it was oh 2 0 1.
Yeah.
Mastering StakeholderCommunication.
Good podcast for this.
your product decisions,don't mean anything unless
you can properly communicatethem to the audiences that
make decisions or impact.
Yeah.
you can ignore any oneof those quadrants at
your peril, basically.

(09:22):
Right.
They're all important.
At some point in time, you mayvary the amount of effort and
energy you spend on any oneof them, but it's a continuum.
you've gotta be on top of that.
So for the scoring for thispodcast, we're gonna go with
the Facebook 2008 scoring.
We're gonna give a thumbsup, is what we're gonna give.
So for communicationsis your primary job.
You should be spendingmajority of your time on it

(09:43):
versus it's just a tool in thetoolkit we're gonna give two
thumbs up for, and one thumbsup against, because they're
very close together as thosearguments, but I think your
executives will agree, morecommunication is desirable
rather than, hey, be effective.
But, you know, maybeoccasionally people dunno
that you even did a release.
Yeah.
'cause the damage caused by thatis a lot worse, so let's go to

(10:06):
a category that I think willbe a little more challenging
for me to defend, as a productmanager, you have to create a
vision and direction for theproduct because your executives
are too incompetent to do it.
Sorry, I, because yourexecutives are too
busy with other things.
That's what I'm totally mean.
What I heard is they'redelegating that to you.
They're delegating it.

(10:27):
That's what it means.
So which side areyou on in, this one?
For or against?
I will be against.
Okay.
So we're on the categoryof, the idea that creating
a vision without authority,without executive backing.
Like the grassroots creating avision like our team is gonna
figure out what the customerneeds and back into that as a

(10:47):
company into our priorities.
I don't know if that's a greatway to go about things, that's
my pushback against thiscategory to say like, hey, the,
the the like communication, it'sthe majority of the PM's job.
And I will say, that's true.
Communication is themajority of the PM's job.
But the point where the companyhas no clearly expressed
strategy, and then the PM juststarts deciding strategies.

(11:10):
I think, you're basicallythrowing a bunch of
knives out on the groundand seeing who wants to
fight you at this point.
I think you're just invitingyourself into this world where
another executive picks aknife up and is like, how dare
you come up with a strategy?
the big important heads aregonna go off on a retreat
and hang out with BrianChesky and talk about how
they went on a hike andcome back with a strategy.

(11:32):
So a product manager who isemboldened enough to create a
strategy like that, they couldsay, look, market opportunities,
don't wait for people tocome back from a retreat.
I'm gonna have to do somethingquick and just do it.
. 'cause , I've seen the data.
So be data driven and go for it.
The alternative is, well,you missed that window.
I don't know which side I'm onat the moment, really, because

(11:54):
if you have five productmanagers deciding strategy,
you're gonna have a muddledstrategy to say the least.
Well, let me bringyou to my side Om.
Let me bring you to myside on this one, because
I'm having a good timearguing against this one.
normally I'd be arguing forthis one listen, our vision
needs to be on the same page.
Otherwise, if we're in a companywith several product managers,
there's a lot of risk here.

(12:14):
The risk is we could endup building the same thing
for the same customer.
Now we're all steppingover each other.
Now we have duplicative effort.
I love that word.
Duplicative.
Duplicative.
That's a great one.
Yeah, the arguing point againstthis one is pretty strong,
most executives, as far asstrategy, if strategy's a light
in the dark, they couldn't findtheir way out of a paperback.

(12:35):
They're chasing money no matterwhere that money comes from.
if the money comes in theform of a customer saying,
just do this one thing,build this one feature.
And then that doesn't lenditself to your broader
strategy, the directionyour company's going.
You're gonna spend 4, 6, 8months building a thing with
your development team, andthen at the end of that 4,

(12:56):
6, 8 months, you're nowherecloser to your company's
goals, to your vision,to a future state at all.
You just did that so you cancash in on that opportunity.
And then that customerat the end of the year,
renewal season, whatever,they're like, ah, I'm out.
Well, they get a better offer.
Absolutely.
and then your companywill be like, hey, we
gotta pay the bills.
And this was money now.

(13:16):
they'll make a lot of excuses.
But, the product managerviewpoint here is, we
should have said no.
Actually the founder viewpointhere is, it might've been
painful in the short term, butwe should say no to that money.
So that six months from now,eight months from now, we
could be further towards thefuture we need to get to.
It doesn't align withwhere we're going.

(13:37):
Large companies, don'thave this option.
You have the visionlaid out for you, right?
Absolutely.
So while I agree with youin real life, very few
companies will say, noto the low hanging fruit.
Right.
this is kind of like talkingabout two extremes, but there's
probably a middle ground here.
the product manager couldbe autonomous enough to make

(13:58):
strategy decisions, but notveer too far away from the
organizational strategy.
Yeah.
Right.
and that'll be okay, butif they do, then that
might invite disaster.
let me throw another oneout to see if I can bring
you closer to my positionhere This is the great one
about product management.
I love hearing people say,well, product management
is, it's like the founderrole, but without authority.

(14:19):
So you have to leadby influence right?
Without authority, like yourvision, like your direction
and your vision, you pulltogether, you go meet with
customers, you talk to them,craft a vision, pull it all
together, Without authority,that is just a suggestion.
Your well researched viewpointbecomes just in opinion.

(14:41):
Yeah.
With without authority.
This one's hard to argueagainst, especially when
you consider multipleproduct managers potentially
bringing their own strategy.
Right.
It's hard to get organizationalalignment behind your
strategy, because peopleare not gonna listen to you.
They listen to the execs,if they don't do that, then
you're not working in unisontowards a strategic goal.

(15:03):
Right?
So this one's hardto argue out of.
I'd say without authority, whatwould be better is to create the
strategy and reach out to oneof those people that are on the
golf course with Brian Cheskyand say, this is our strategy.
Please blast this out.
That's all they have to do.
They can do thatfrom their phone.
So I kind of can'targue against that one.

(15:24):
what's our scale today?
Whatever the scale is,this one gets equal.
Yeah.
We're gonna call this one.
I, I wrote two in one.
I forgot where our scale was.
Two and one.
Sounds like scoresof a soccer game.
Sorry, I'm gonna givethis one An equal amount
of bunts and burners.
I wrote little beakers on mypad with bunts and burners
underneath them so it getsan equal amount of BTUs.
That's right, that's right.

(15:44):
BTUs.
All these kind of like,tangents made me just
want to do a live podcast.
the next category Iwant to talk about is.
on the podcast we did not toolong ago, 2 0 1 of mastering
Stakeholder Communication andManagement Arguing Agile 2 0 1.
We talk about thepower interest matrix.
breaking down yourstakeholders in different
segments of the quad.

(16:05):
And in this category ofstakeholder mapping you need to
handle each segment differently,like completely differently,
different framework, like in thelow interest, low power, you're
just blasting out to a Slackchannel or over the internet or
adding to your release notes andthrowing into the application.
Yeah.
Whereas the high power,high interest folks, you're

(16:26):
having a one-on-one withthem like every week.
Where you, like you weretalking about like the different
interviews that you're doingand what you're thinking, before
you even made a decision, givingthem a window to say Hey, I
think I might make this decisionI want to challenge that in this
category if communications isyour main job, you're just gonna
manage this quad, like 24 7 andare you gonna have any time left

(16:50):
to, to, to do any real work?
Is there a way you can justsend out decisions to the squad?
is there a way you canspend less time doing this
navigation of the quadand then get to real work?
the flip side of thatwould be just don't
bother, just send out.
Communications toeverybody, right?
Maybe you can automate yourcommunications at the quadrants

(17:11):
where you're sending a moredetailed message to your
executives a less detailedmessage to your external users.
And a, you know, a messagewith some notes to your
internal, like, somethinglike that, you know, y Yeah.
Yeah.
So doing that need and take alarge percentage of your time
if you can use the automationtools we have now, right?
I still think you needto pay attention to your

(17:32):
stakeholders needs and map them.
. These people couldmake or break.
What you're trying to do,especially those high
power, high influence people.
Yeah.
Those people that segmentation,is needed, but not to the
point where all you're doing isfiguring out what to tell whom.
We have the four quads, right?
a power interest matrixand what do you do in the

(17:53):
situation where, how doyou keep the comms, because
you're communicating outto those groups, those
four separate groups.
Four separate messages.
Right.
And inside those groups,it might be several,
subgroups but let's justskip over that for a second.
Yeah.
And say you're communicating outto those groups and those groups
are interacting with each other.

(18:14):
So like in the case ofhigh power, low interest.
Mm-hmm.
Those are like peers to yourhigh power, high interest
people that you work for.
the high power folks, regardlessif they have low or high
interest, they're talking toeach other behind the scenes.
Yeah.
So they're gonna talk toeach other and they need
to come to you to find outwhat the ground truth is.

(18:35):
. Again, this couldeat all of your time.
It really should not if yourcommunications are of a decent
level of clarity in yourpreempting what they're really
looking for from your comms, itneed not take all of your time.
Okay.
So are you saying likethe consistency of your
messaging is not like.

(18:56):
Good enough, likenot detailed enough.
So if a situation like thathappens Where, oh, I talked
to this person and theysaid they thought you were
doing this or whatever.
okay, well, I, the productmanager haven't consistently
put out a thorough enoughmessage to all my groups.
I need to refactor my messagingand send out more detail
more detail or more clarity.

(19:17):
I think that's true.
or a larger horizon thanI'm broadcasting possibly.
Right?
So at the end of the day,it's the WIIFMs, think about
each of the quadrants and putyourself in their shoes and say,
what's in it for me from here?
So those people that arelow interest but high.
Influence high power, right?
Yeah.
It could be your CFO,they're not interested in the
intricacies of your product,but they are interested

(19:39):
in the financial side.
Right.
You could give them alittle bit of information
around the finances.
Which the other peopledon't care about on the
opposite quadrant, butalso be open to follow ups.
Right.
Because that's nothing worsethan simply sending out comms
in, in almost like a one-wayblast Type of situation.

(19:59):
So put avenues updelegate some of the work.
there's no one solutionto this in real life.
What will happen is you'llspend time on certain quadrants.
Right.
Some of the times.
And then other times you'llspend time on other quadrants.
Now you might think it'sa waste of your time
to go in that low lobe.
Right.
But they're important becausethey have strength in numbers.

(20:20):
There's a lot of them there.
The opposite quadrant, fewerpeople, but they matter too.
So you gotta figure that out.
Maybe you delegate some of that,you know, the actual comms part.
the interesting part hereis I have a note that says,
executives should understandtactical constraints as
well as the engineersunderstand business goals.
So the idea is one groupunderstands the other group's

(20:41):
concerns equally well.
from my perspective, youjust have to be a wizard
to be able to, I mean, it'snot really being, a wizard.
I'm being a littlebit ridiculous.
really what you have todo is, be empathetic from
one end of the spectrum tothe complete opposite end.
So that everybodyunderstands everybody else's
view of the situation.
That's really what'shappening here.

(21:01):
I guess I'm talking myself intolosing this category because
you need to spend enough timeto build this like end-to-end
bridge that everyone can walkon, and then the rest of the
time is just maintaining it.
But if you're startingas a product manager in a
new organization and thislevel of communication

(21:22):
doesn't exist, it's notgonna be 50% of your time.
No, I got, I gotta, I gota wake up call for you.
It's gonna be like 90% of yourtime to set up all of the Email
blasts and release announcementsand release notes and automated,
pipelines or whatever thatsend this stuff out, until,
the cross section is built.
Where people are startingto unsubscribe from your

(21:43):
comments to be like,look, Brian, I get it.
Enough.
And then you can pullit back and equalize
on a like, okay, cool.
Everyone understands now Ithink what you just described
is reality, but today you cantake advantage of automation.
There's a lot of toolsavailable to you.
That can be automatically sentout based on conditions, you

(22:04):
can do a lot there to expeditethings, but , you have to
build the bridges, right?
So if you are new productmanager, you've got to start
there, build a bridge andearn That trust, with your
stakeholders, that whatyou're sending out has merit
and they can reach out toyou if they have questions.
If there are enough questions,instead of reaching out to each

(22:25):
individual or each quadranteven, you could do a town
hall type of meeting whereeveryone can come, so you're
only spending half an hour toan hour across all of them.
So you could use thosekinds of, I guess.
Techniques for want ofa better expression.
Yeah.
To try and expedite things,but when you first go into
an organization, you arestarting from scratch.

(22:47):
the bridges have to be built.
All these bridges don't haveto be built with, concrete.
Some of these are stickbridges, you can get across it.
Sometimes you don't have tobuild a bridge, it's a pontoon.
Throw things on there andshove it across the river.
There it goes.
Just because I can'tdeal with this category
without laughing anymore.
I'm gonna give three LondonBridges for stakeholder mapping,

(23:08):
like for actually going throughlisting or arguing Agile.
Two, only if you givearguing Agile 2 0 1
your time and attention.
Three London Bridgesfor actually building
bridges between yourself.
And actually it's four,it's four stakeholder
management categories.
So Four London bridges.
Each one, each for eachcategory, each bridge that

(23:29):
you're building between yourstakeholder pool and yourself.
I'm gonna give a London Bridgeeach, for each category.
So four London bridges.
And God saved the Queen.
That's King now.
That's right.
Oh, oh, I can't dealwith myself right now.
point number four is thatinvisible work that you
work on as a product manageror development team, you

(23:49):
need to spend intentionaltime making that work turn
from invisible to visible.
Oh boy, why would you do that?
Who cares?
So that's the other side of it.
Who cares?
As long as I'm being effective,my work speaks for itself.
why do I have to, toot my hornsaying, look what I'm doing
here, nobody cares about whatyou do to facilitate things.

(24:10):
Customers don't care about that.
Business value comesfrom releasing products.
Shouldn't that be themeasure of success for me?
I mean, sometimes workingon things that are invisible
is enabling other teams.
And sometimes working on thingsthat are visible, like you are
focusing on business outcomesrather than playing turf games.

(24:32):
You know what I mean?
Like winning internalpoints or scoring yards
or whatever internally.
sometimes you have to be ateam player, And take the
l for your own team or takea, like if we're doing flow
internally, like, oh my teamlooks like we haven't released
anything 'cause I've likeseeded two team members time
to this other team to getsomething over the finish line.

(24:52):
Like, okay, well I lookbad for a sprint or two.
What am I gonnado at that point?
am I gonna make a bigcheerleading thing to be like,
oh, my engineers are helpingthis other team because the
way that's gonna sound, isthis other team is terrible
and I had to bail 'em out.
That's what it's gonna soundlike, but, what we're saying
here is when you do that, youneed to make that visible.
So management can seeonly because Brian's team

(25:14):
helped this other teamwas it possible for them to
be successful because it'sso incompetent, like Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, we just, it justsounds bad in my head.
it does.
And that's great if you are as aproduct manager or playing for
brownie points, it's not for thegreater good at the end of the
day and senior leadership aren'teven looking at this stuff.
So it doesn't matter.
You can jump up anddown all you want.

(25:34):
No one's listening.
They only care aboutproduct success.
Right?
So that really is yourmeasure of success.
If you are a team playerand you're making your
teams better that's helpingthe team mature, right?
It's not directlycontributing to the product.
Of course it is indirectly, butno one sees that, So should you
make a big deal about that orjust say, this is what I do?

(25:57):
I'm gonna flip the tableson you and pivot to the for
category and say like, what ifyou're a product manager who
understands org design or ifYou have a particularly strong
scrum master on your team andyou reach out to help another,
team, like, why should you notpromote that to leadership to
say like, Hey, only because weproactively knocked down all

(26:18):
these cross team dependencies,or maybe we did this cross team
architecture type of thing.
only because we did thatare we able to now in the
next quarter really fly anddeliver these things that the
customers really care about,it's super easy to defend
this category for me to saylisten, results speak louder
than any kind of releaseannouncement or demo when you

(26:39):
can show your executives, Hey,because I proactively made
this decision to knock downthis technical debt thing.
Now we're able to do x y and Zfeature and bring in revenue.
if we didn't do that two monthsago, three months ago when
none of y'all believed in it.
But I pushed through anyway.
To hit my ROI and took itto my roadmap I deal with

(27:00):
my did it with my team,because none of the other
teams wanted to absorb it.
Now all of the teams and all theproducts are able to accelerate.
I feel like I'm being combativeto all the decision makers now,
saying, listen, trust that Iknow when it's time to put time.
Into technical debtreduction and punching
us through to the future.

(27:22):
developing enabling featuresthat help many teams.
Those kind of like back ofthe house things like they are
you, the product manager beingeffective over communication.
Lots of teams need thatlike every team needs that.
here we're saying if themajority of the time is spent
communicating, that is lesstime away from doing things

(27:42):
that actually make an impact.
that's my arguingpoint in this category.
I'm gonna take briefly theother side, even though I do
agree with you, like please.
I already know the otherside is gonna be like,
well, you can do that.
And also communicate too.
And also work 70 hours.
That's where we're gonnaend up as a product manager.
For me, that's where I'm gonnaend up is like, well, I gotta
do that and I gotta communicateit and I gotta get ready for
the future I'm gonna end upworking 65 hours this week.

(28:05):
that's what it really takes.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, right.
To do all of this, that's true.
Also, senior leadershiponly care for results.
They don't care aboutoperational difficulties.
as a cynic if I were a seniorleader and he came to me and
said, listen, I knocked down allthese things, reduce technical
debt, et cetera, et cetera.
A cynic might say, great.
Why don't you do thissooner, three months ago?

(28:25):
Yeah.
Right.
So it's like you can't catch abreak because that's all they
care about is the end result.
So that's the otherside of this, right?
Yeah.
I think there's a mediumin there somewhere, like
the messaging to seniorleadership is, we did this
because, but don't dwell onthat because thing, right.
Just move on.
Mm-hmm.
Just move on and then usethe success that you have
internally below that level.

(28:47):
To evangelize, here's howwe we're solving these
things so other peoplecan benefit from it.
the arguing case of like, seniorleaders only care about results.
they don't necessarily careabout how hard it was to get,
or how many obstacles youovercame to get to that point.
Doesn't that argue formy side where I'm saying
making the, the, the, thevalue of this hidden work.

(29:09):
Like making it likeshining a light on the
value of this hidden mark.
Does it though, yourpeers may care about that.
. But senior leadership, dothey have time for all that
organizational dysfunction?
They don't wanna know howthe sausage is made, it's
just how many thousandsof sausages have you made.
Right.
right.
and why haven't youraised the price?
Well, I think we'redone with this category.
I think we both kind of settledin the against category.

(29:31):
We did.
You need to make work visible,but the easiest way to make
the work visible is to justdo the work and be effective.
Right.
I guess my problem inthis category is there
are people that areineffective but communicate
regularly and effectively.
those are the people that getpromoted versus the people
that inefficiently communicate.

(29:52):
But slowly get work donethat's like the boring
sausage making process thatconsistently makes sausage.
Yeah.
And, that doesn'tget immediate.
Like you're right, you'renot getting clicks on
the internet for that.
That's absolutely right.
But the people promotingit, what you outlined.
Yeah.
I don't know.
there's two sausages againstit and it's hard to give
any points in this category.
May I'll give one sausage,one sausage, a burnt sausage.

(30:15):
Oh, it's, I, lemmeput lines on it.
That way we know it's burnt.
I mean, it's gonnaget eaten either way.
with sauerkraut andmustard on top of it.
You can't tell ifit's burnt or not.
that's what I'm saying.
That's right.
I can tell how I eat myssauerkraut and mustard.
It's a big sausage.
I wrote it on the paper.
I'm gonna stop talkingabout sausage now.
Let's talk about theexperience recognition gap.
Oh boy.

(30:35):
I want to talk to you aboutanother category, which I
find real close in my heart.
Okay.
And the category, I, I call itthe prove it first category.
Oh, yeah.
And here's the waythis category works.
I'll let you know whatside I'm on with the way
I describe this category.
And the categoryworks like this.
I used to work for A CEOand his, his I'm, I'm, I'm

(30:57):
broadcasting a potentialfuture podcast right now.
His viewpoint was a very,who Move My Cheese Viewpoint.
Oh yeah.
And it was basically, if youwant a promotion, you need to
start working that job thatyou wanna be promoted into.
For like many months, right?
If not years, many months.

(31:18):
And when you've proven you cando it well in that job, and
you've been working in that jobfor a while, only then will the
executives choose to be thequeen with the sword and bestow
on you the rank of that job.
Yeah.
And that, that is the experienceslash recognition gap.
So this is one wayorganizations can get real

(31:41):
good work out of people, butnot pay them as much, right?
Because you're striving toget that promotions, you're
gonna do whatever it takes.
And for a duration they deem.
Is the price to pay.
So, you have to put in thetime, Brian, put in a year,
two years, before you'reeligible to be promoted.

(32:02):
Unfortunately, this isalso quite prevalent out
there, especially in largercompanies where everybody's
like going after that, youknow promotion in a cutthroat
environment, no one getspromoted for a long time,
but everyone's working hard.
Sorry.
I'm looking for the pointsand I can't find anything.
Leadership qualities areonly evident once you're
doing the position.

(32:23):
So the other side, right?
Where perhaps the grassis greener, is you go play
golf with those leaders.
You don't have tonecessarily do that work.
none of this categoryapplies when you play golf
with the That's right.
That's the nice thing aboutthis category is like the idea
that, oh, you gotta be doingthe job before we promote
you into it, and you've gottabe proving yourself , like
the chief product officer.

(32:45):
Who is like a sales guy that,has sold the contractor to
Getting promoted to the, productthing, you know, to make sure
we're building the quote right.
Thing that our customersreally need who has no product
management experience, , theproblem with this category
and why this category gets nopoints with me, and there's
absolutely no way you canconvince me that this is a
real thing is because thereare people out there that get

(33:05):
a job with no qualifications.
Absolutely all toocommon, unfortunately.
Right?
Yeah.
We've seen that, especially inthe product management field.
, I talk about this allthe time in the podcast.
I'm not gonna go out on alimb and say every CPO in the
world, but I will say mostof them, a lot of CPOs never
managed the product man.
So, so against like three CPOs.
And an R 2D two over there.

(33:26):
And and a frownyface, a R 2D two.
Wait, wait.
I wrote, did yousee what I wrote?
I wrote two DI like RR2D two, there you go.
That company is justdisguise this under,
what do they call it?
Probation.
You're on probation.
I thought you weregonna say exploitation.
Well that too.
Yeah.
My bad.
Narrative leadership versustechnical excellence.
this is a good one.

(33:46):
this category,narrative leadership.
Versus technical excellence.
separates the seniorsfrom the juniors when it
comes to the PM realm.
What it means istechnical excellence.
What it really means is likeex like the execution, the
excellence of execution.
I don't wanna be like thehitman over here, , yeah.
The, the, it's, that'sthe first, pro wrestling

(34:07):
Brett Hart reference.
I'm wanna make!What it means is your ability
to tell a good story versusyour ability to execute as
a person that works witha development team Yep.
Into production.
So I guess it's likestoryteller versus operator is
really what the category is.
I'm not really sure.
I'm willing to havemy mind changed in
this category because.

(34:27):
I'm not sure which sideI'm on with this one.
So your ability to crafta narrative and then to
spread that narrativeto leadership, right?
Sure.
And then to everybody else,that buy-in for that narrative
versus your technical andanalytical excellence.
Meaning like looking in data.

(34:48):
This category is becomingthe intuition versus
evidence category, right?
I just know.
What they're gonna say.
Yeah.
that's starting tobecome this category.
it is.
But I think this is slightlydifferent in that people that
have that skill to weave andcraft these stories from, what
the customer's requirementsare, their needs, their

(35:10):
wishes, their desires thoseskills are special, right?
Yeah.
People listen to that andyou can come up with all
kinds of charts and point tothose on the other side of
the equation be data driven.
Right?
Yeah.
That's great because , youare not just coming out with
opinions, you are supplantingyour stance, With actual data.

(35:31):
Mm-hmm.
But I don't think thattrumps the other side
tell story really?
Yeah.
I don't think ittrumps that because.
You get engagementupfront from hearing
initially what's going on.
So that typical thing thatpeople say, what's your
elevator speech, right?
If you're talking toleadership and you have a
great pitch and you can tella story, you have skills.

(35:52):
You can do that at each levelin the organization, right?
With your peers,with your teams.
I think that'sdefinitely valuable.
I gotta tell you I'm supposed tobe taking the opposite viewpoint
and there are, things that Icould point out here a focus on
storytelling and telling greatstories, just like they do in
Silicon Valley, they tell greatstories like, oh, my Theranos

(36:13):
product can tell from yourblood whether you're gonna,
go to the moon or whatever.
It's like the abilityto tell a great story
like marketing success.
It doesn't necessarily comefrom telling you a great story.
Product success doesn'tnecessarily come from
telling a great story.
At some point you haveto back up your claims.
but at the same stroke thatI am disagreeing with you.

(36:35):
I also am thinking in theback of my head of times
in my career where a greatstory trumps evidence a
hundred percent of the time.
And, not even like ittrumps evidence, meaning it
forces everyone to take asecond look at the evidence
they have or whatever.
It just blinds people.
To the evidence at hand.

(36:56):
Yeah.
Completely of like, oh, I knowthat we're not getting any money
in, but this sales pipeline, wefeel real good and that there's
some oil flowing through thepipeline and we just, you know,
oh, it's such a great pipeline.
And then we do that untilthe company goes bankrupt.
I've seen that Too manytimes the people capable

(37:17):
of weaving that narrativeand telling that story.
And bringing everybody along.
I've seen it strongly portrayed,overriding every bit of
everything I could argue againsttoo many times to very seriously
argue against this one.
So first of all, yougotta recognize that
remarkable stories, Staywith you for a long time.

(37:38):
Data points don't, yeah.
Right.
So that's one thing.
But to your point, ifyou're just telling stories.
Not following through.
Yeah.
Then you're not gonna getany more VC money You can go
only so far and say, roundone, we're not making money.
We don't even have a product,but we're getting mind share,
maybe you don't need to.
the funny thing about thisis like all the AI companies

(38:00):
that go and lobby the presidentand be like, oh, we could
just be the best AI industryin the world if we just had
500 billion extra dollars.
Please miss the president.
Give us $500 billion.
And just using your narrativeon a different audience,
that's just called marketing.
I almost want to not talkabout this category anymore

(38:20):
because I don't think I'mgonna cover any extra ground
because this strategy works.
I guess my strongestpushback on the strategy is
it works until it doesn't.
Until it doesn't,until it doesn't work.
And then you gotta pick up yourcarnival and move it to a new
town to get money from thembecause the old town's not gonna
come to your carnival anymore.

(38:41):
Yeah.
So it works untilit doesn't work.
I completely understandand seed all my points.
One point for you,zero points for me.
I'm perfectly willing to takethat loss because, this is a
personal failing of myself.
I don't know how to combatthat in that the storytelling
like power in the humanbrain just can't, I don't

(39:02):
know a way to overcome that.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Well, that's number six.
Luckily we only gaveone point for that, so
we can move on quickly.
Number seven, inheritingorganizational chaos
versus creating order.
I think the point here is asa product manager, your job is
to create order from the chaos.
And my point against thisis every minute that you are

(39:24):
creating order better teamstructures, better communication
structures, breaking downsilos, every minute you spend
doing that is a minute awayfrom doing real PM work.
And, you can be like,oh, Brian, communication
is your real PM work.
But I would say like, no PMwork, like talking to your
customers, figuring outbetter marketing schemes,
better business models.
That's PM work.
Figuring out whyyour organization is.

(39:47):
As poorly designed andscaled as possible.
All the stuff that you thinka scrum master and agile coach
would do, like, I think thisis a waste of time for a pm
I can easily argue this one.
Yeah.
Listen, two things here thatI want to talk about, ? If
you're a PM and you're in anorganization that is, say
suboptimally designed and youhave ideas to improve things

(40:08):
here and there, but you don'tdo that because you're just
too busy doing PM things,you're complicit in continuing
that status quo, basically.
Some will turn thataround and say, but oh,
that shows adaptability.
We can even work inthis crappy culture.
Well, hang on Are you justdoing things for the short term?
Or do you want things to bebetter for the longer term too?

(40:30):
Right?
rather than say this is kindof heads or tails, black
or white binary thing, youcould do a little of this.
But leave it to org designexperts to come help you with
that and do more on the PM side.
it's not black andwhite in my opinion.
I mean, creating an inadapting existing structures
into better structuresshows potential for you to

(40:53):
become an executive leader.
Yeah, I'm with you on thatit does show that you're
ready to become a, a founderentrepreneur, like, you know,
original thinker type of deal.
And also it shows that , maybeyou should move on from this
company who has no interest inbettering themselves, right?
so that you can have more time.
To actually do your job.

(41:14):
Yeah.
that's my problem with thiscategory is why are these
systemic problems from arguingAgile 1 99, the Deming podcast.
Why, why are thesethings continuing?
If everyone sees them, whydoesn't someone intercept and
deal with these problems so thatyou as a product manager can be
free to do product management?
I don't know.
that's a fair point, right?

(41:34):
I mean, product managersare elastic first trying
to put the rock up hill.
Yeah.
we always give that advicetoo on this podcast, Rick,
keep that resume updatedbecause at some point you've
gotta decide enough's enough.
All right.
Well against gets two rocksand four gets no rocks.
Let's move on tothe next category.
Alright, the categorythat I'm excited about is
self advocacy versus thework speaks for itself.

(41:58):
This is a little bit similarto a previous category that
we just did, but I wanna talkabout this one specifically
because I think this is one ofthe ones that I have a hard time
with, which is if we're nailingthings and customers are using
it, you can see the effects ofour work in the metrics, right?
daily active use isrising, churn is dropping.

(42:19):
The signup rate is increasing.
You can see that we're nailingthings, but then the company's
like, rather than promote the.
Product manager whose metricsare obviously on the rise.
I'm gonna promote theproduct manager that I like
better 'cause I like them.
Because they talk to meon the weekends and they
answer my slack messages atmidnight when I post a random

(42:40):
shower thought on a Sunday.
They hear from these people allthe time, as opposed to people
that are just quietly sittingthere getting the work done.
So it kind of makes sense that,if that's who you know, you're
gonna promote that person.
People like promotingpeople they like.
I get it.
I don't know if I'm gonna comealong with you on this one
with that kind of attitude.

(43:01):
I was trying to, I dunnowhy I'm so accusatory.
That was a Yeah, but Imean like the, the, the
self-promotion thing.
I, I have a problem with the,I honestly would think for
most people, self-promotion.
Feels kind of slimy.
It should.
but we've seen lots of peoplewho do it and they thrive
at it, these are heroes.
They wanna be heroes in thecompany and chances are they're

(43:23):
not really team players.
They don't give credit.
You know?
'cause it's allabout me, me, me.
So if they're doing thatand leadership's not seeing
that, I'd say we fall backto our normal advice here.
. Keep that resume updated,I think I have a shot of
winning this category.
Because I do believe thiscategory is important.
I think it's important to goout of your way to separate

(43:45):
your work from everyoneelse's work to say, Hey, this
thing was successful becauseI was involved, however.
The negative size of thatis basically what I've seen
all throughout my careerwhere you are claiming
ownership of everyone else'swork that was successful.
And then when thefailures happen, you're
nowhere to be seen.
That's what I've seen normally.
But if you're going to focuson outcomes and showing your

(44:09):
stakeholders, no matter whatquadrant they're in of the power
interest matrix I think thiscould be a real tool for you.
That, and also a big pointagainst saying self advocacy is
the only strategy, it doesn'tmatter if it's a success or
failure the fact that youare promoting your own thing.
Is the only thing that matters.
I don't know if I believe that.

(44:30):
I think there are certainorganizational cultures where
you can see this happening.
You can see people gettingpromoted that basically
toot their own horn.
And then you've gotta thinkto yourself, well, if that's
how leadership is promotingpeople and rewarding people,
I have two choices basically.
Be like that.
Or take my expertisesomeplace else, it's sad

(44:51):
but true that companies likethat lose some good people.
not everybody'sgood at doing that.
A lot of people are good atpeacocking is what I call it.
Well, the takeaway from thiscategory is a pretty hot take.
It says Your brilliance hasno organizational value.
But at the same time,strategic self-advocacy
isn't bragging, it's ensuringyour contributions matter.

(45:13):
So that takeaway is basicallytaking both sides of it
and globbing it together.
I don't know if I feelbetter about this or worse.
Now the category's over,I think this one gets
zero brags each side.
Zero brags!let's go to our final point.
It says one page vision versuscomprehensive documentation.
I'm glad we saved this oneto last because we did do

(45:35):
the PRD podcast arguingAgile 1 23 on PRDs, right?
the claim here is themajority of product documents.
Nobody reads them, So get allyour chat PRDs, get all your,
your funny glasses and yourquirky quirks outta, outta your
system because all of the AIsystems you build to build your
documents and all that kind ofstuff, nobody's gonna read 'em.

(45:56):
what you have a chance ofgetting read is a one-pager.
This product, or I guessthis feature, this big thing,
this big swing that we'retaking organizationally.
You've got one page tocommunicate that to your
people, which is actually achallenge to try and communicate
everything you want to.

(46:17):
On a single page, right?
It is a challenge to seewhat are the right things
to put there and thebrevity of language, the
clarity that's needed.
Not everyone can do this, right?
A savvy PM can perhaps do this,but not everyone can do this,
the trade off here is yeah,one page gives everyone, one
place to go back to, one placeto add comments to, you know,

(46:37):
it's pretty easy, The tradeoff here is like you can't
do everything in one page,even Amazon has a six pager.
You can't doeverything in one page.
So, that's my trade off to this.
So while it's doubted asone page, what if it's two?
What if it's three?
Not, reams and reamsof documentation.
I think the one pagesimply means keep it
really short and concise.

(46:59):
That's really whatI think from this.
Listen, I've put togetherIKEA furniture where there's
not a word in the manual.
And somehow you manage,you have parts left over.
It's important to say it'snot just a single page
necessarily, but it's brief.
so you don't havethis noise everywhere.
You gotta go throughreferences and all this
different documentation.

(47:21):
So I think when you talkabout vision, it should
be short and to the point.
I can't imagine a visiondocument that's six pages long.
No one's gonna read it.
And if they read it,they wouldn't retain it.
I get the arguing point thatthe unnecessary complexity, just
doesn't need to be in there.
It needs to say, here's thestate of the world, here's
where we're going and here'swhat the world will look

(47:42):
like when we get there.
that's it, maybe some highlevel, like must have,
could have, type of stuff.
Some bounding basically.
I can go along with that.
I can give you points for that.
the hangups here that Ihave is if you're building a
product that is inside of asuite of products, like one

(48:02):
page could mask complexity.
Let me about the YouTube likeif you came up with a product
like, oh, we're gonna just allowyou to edit all the videos.
In the world or whatever.
You're like all inthe whole world.
Yeah.
On YouTube.
Like, come on, man.
Like that's a insanelycomplex product that

(48:23):
won't fit in one page.
This goes back to what Iwas saying earlier, the
ability to concisely craftwhat you're trying to do.
So in that scenario, forexample, maybe you need
to break that down, right?
Videos of this size,quality, et cetera, and
that could be a one pagerfor each of those, perhaps.
So you end up with four pages.
Yeah.
I'm perfectly fine ceedingthis category because I think

(48:45):
this is out of everythingwe talked about, probably
the most important category,other than the initial one
we started where 51% iscommunication, for the 49% of
people you can't communicatewith on a daily basis.
You have somewhere to put downyour thoughts, Think about a
typical company, how many peoplecan your company scale to until

(49:05):
you just can't get to all ofthem in a day-to-day basis.
that's where I'm goingwith this category.
why?
I think this is a goodone to cut my losses
and cash out, right?
And just leave the casino beforethe house takes all my money.
If you can't fit yourproduct vision on one page.
You haven't, come up withelevator pitches for new
product features to pitch.

(49:26):
If you can't fit theminto a ten second pitch,
they're not refined enough.
Your pitches as a productmanager for a new feature, let
alone a whole product suite.
They need to be very concise.
And this is the documentversion for people that are
actually our high interest.
This is a high interest version.
So like you can you get awhole page to dedicate, I

(49:49):
mean, a whole page is a lot.
It is a lot.
So what is thecontent of that page?
maybe we'll take that oneto a separate podcast.
Because that's a, thatwould be a good one.
If we were to outline thisproduct vision document without
a lot of thought put intoit, which we can cover in a
different podcast, so like, wedon't need to go too deep now.
It would be your companystrategy, your North star, how

(50:12):
the two of them tied together.
All right, let's,let's stick with that.
And then any cross-functionaldependencies, shared goals
with other teams, otherproducts, ways that they
can contribute to this.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
What else would it be thingsthat you need from other teams.
Things that other teamscan get from you, right?
Other things are commitmentsthat you need to be successful.

(50:34):
This is a weird document atthis point, but I can't imagine
this all fits on one page.
when we make this strategicdecision, when leadership talks
about this strategic thing,I need to be included because
this product touches it.
so if like, oh, if, like BrianRoman's development company,
if, if like we develop a, aproduct that operates in the
FinTech market and somebodyin our company wants to talk

(50:56):
about stock trading, we needto grab this product manager
and bring them in Yep.
To talk about like, oh, weare exploring this other,
other feature or otherproduct or partnering with
another company that doessomething with stock trading.
Okay.
So there's some, there'ssome like organizational
level working agreementsthat are happening.

(51:17):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it is basically akin toa contract between different
teams contributing to a commonproduct, so it's ending up
being a vision document, a goalsdocument being like, what does
the world look like when weget there and also it becomes
a working agreement document.
So it's like threedocuments in one page.
That needs to be a real, likewhoever's editing that they need

(51:39):
to be doing their job that day.
I'm just saying.
So yeah, those three headingsyou outlined, but at some
point on that document,it has to relay what the.
Solution or product is who thetarget audience is, presumably.
I mean, this thing could gointo two pages it could and
that'd be perfectly acceptable.
When you have thisdocument, you could do a
whole quarterly planning.

(52:00):
on this document, and thenwhen the quarter is finished
and you've implemented somefeatures and got some customer
feedback, I would go back tothis document and say, now that
we implemented these things,how does this document change?
do we want to change our goals,target different customers?
Talk about personas,like all the things you
do around the business.
Could roll back up intothis document, but, my main

(52:21):
arguing point here in thispodcast is if you establish
this document, it can drivethe rest of your business
Maybe your working agreementsget adjusted based on the
things you find and thethings you find don't need
to be in this document.
Or you're like, you know, you,when you change your goals as
you accomplish goals, maybe yournew goals go into this document.
This document, whetherit's one page or two,

(52:42):
doesn't really matter.
Is the single most importantartifact where everyone is
aligning themselves to it.
Otherwise, you're notgonna build the right
thing for the right people.
So, when I said solutionearlier, I should
have said product.
What is our product is, I'mthinking about like the Geoffrey
Moore you know, our product.
So if you put all of thosethings in, you're gonna
exceed a page, I suspect.

(53:02):
You very well could, I mean,the Amazon six pager is the
industry, gold standard thatpeople will reference for this.
But I'm saying like,start with a page.
Yeah.
see what you can get from there.
See what kind of alignment ifyou can't get enough alignment,
expand it, you know what I mean?
Two pages.
I personally think just whatwe talked about, vision,
goals, working agreements.
I think you'realready two pages.

(53:24):
Yeah, I agree.
So I could seestarting per product.
Or if it gets larger,you could do this type of
document per large feature,like big roadmap, pivot
type of yearly refocusing.
Or maybe quarterlyplanning type of refocus.
this is our next documentthat everyone agrees on.
I think the importantthing is that you

(53:46):
reference this throughout.
Yeah.
Because if it is not somethingthat you do and then put away or
mount on a wall and it's done.
Much like the other podcastthat we talked about
with vision and mission.
This is something that youreally need to keep coming back
to whenever there's any kindof, disagreements or dissent or
deviations from the mainstreamunderstanding of what your

(54:09):
product or product line is.
I don't know if we've disagreedon this at all actually.
Yeah, I think it'ssuper important to align
at the vision level.
so with all the pointstallied up all things
being equal, that's right.
Arch two, D two andC3 po are equal.
That's what I'm saying.
We've got a 11 in thefour category and nine
in the against category.

(54:30):
And I think the nine isonly because R 2D two only
counts as one R two, D twoand C3 PO counts as three po.
That's right.
So it's 11 against nine.
Communication has becomethe primary job of the pm.
That's what we've agreed ontoday, or at least that's
what the numbers tell us.
I am salty about losingthis battle because I don't
know if I agree with thisone, but I'm just happy

(54:51):
that both teams had fun.
There you go, man.
And that's the mostimportant thing, right?
Let us know in commentsdown below what you
think about these things.
And don't forget tolike and subscribe.
We'll see you next time.

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AA211 - Communication Is Product's Only Job, OR IS IT?

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}AA211 - Communication Is Product's Only Job, OR IS IT?