AA233 - Building Your Own Product: Ultimate PM Hack or Career Sabotage? - Arguing Agile

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey Om, step into my office.
That was, was that likeyou were walking into
a bar like the swingydoor in the saloon.
18 hundreds.
Like my office is a saloon inthe 18 hundreds.
I like it.
That's where it is.
A CPO walks into yoursprint review Om, and

(00:21):
they suggest adding achat bot to the checkout
flow because everybodyneeds to be doing
agentic things now.
Oh boy.
And this is the third time theyproposed this to you?
Listen, just to getout of that particular
meeting, you could tell'em it's on the backlog.
Okay.
Well there's only somany times you can
say that until you'reNo, I understand.
Until you're quote,not a team player.
Understand not a team player.

(00:41):
Listen, I think youneed to evaluate what
they're saying in thetotality of the product
and not just becauseeverybody's doing it.
Does it add value?
Does it extend thevalue proposition
for your customers,for your product?
Or is it just one ofthose also and things?
Right?
Well that's what we'retalking about today.
We're talking about themillion dollar question
in product management.

(01:01):
Is product sense an innate.
Thing, somethingyou're born with or
can it be developedlike any other skill?
That's right.
Go check our podcaston arguing Agile.
Oh, arguing Agile100 Mindset, Carol
Dweck's mindset.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, yeah.
Somehow hundred episodes ago.
Plus, somehow weflipped, we flipped
the coin, we flipped awhole bunch of coins.
We flipped all the coins.
And I'm on the fixedmindset side of

(01:24):
arguing this podcast.
Don't ask if that'smy personal belief
or if I just gota bad coin flip.
But all I'm gonna say iswe flip more than once.
I might be flipping something.
We, we'd all beflipping something.
So, because, becauseI will tell you if
it can't be learnedwe're doomed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Doomed.
Yes.
That's the word.
Doomed.
Because like badproduct leaders, I
mean, they get promoted.
So it's maybe you don'twanna learn it then

(01:45):
if you can't learn.
I mean, that's a whole differentpodcast if you haven't
learned it by now.
If you've made your wayinto the right circles
and got to placesbefore other people and
got to opportunitiesbefore other people,
and you've not learnedproduct sense yet,
maybe a follow uppodcast is maybe
helps those people.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Maybe if they can't,or maybe it doesn't.
Maybe it doesn't,but if it can't, if
it can be taught.
Yeah.
Then like whatexplains why so many

(02:06):
organizations aredrowning in just
terrible productmanagement decisions?
I really like this topic.
I'm hoping it'sgonna resonate with
some of our viewersand listeners.
the first category Ihave picked out here
is the nature versusnurture category.
Which is probably,look, we need to
get this outta theway fast, right?
Sure.
Because everything'sgonna build on top of
this is product senseencompasses intuition

(02:27):
about user needs,market timing, technical
feasibility, businessviability, all the
illities that MartyKagan wrote books about,
and everyone, all,y'all bought 'em and
then read 'em and thendisregarded 'em any way
to build what you want.
Some argue it's innatecognitive ability or
maybe like, well, Iguess I'll stick to my
coin flip on this one.
While others claim it's purelyexperimental learning.

(02:47):
Okay, so there are twofundamental sides here.
I'm gonna just likeI did last podcast,
which actually whatbig side, which was
actually two podcaststo go at this point.
I'm gonna throw outthe against to star us.
And then we'll workour way backwards.
That's, that's howwe'll do this one.
All right.
So the four and against,I see here is on one
side, product senseis fundamentally a
learnable skillset.

(03:08):
That's a, this isthe fixed mindset
category, right?
Yeah.
So you'll be onthe side of a, not
a fixed mindset.
Sorry, what's the other one?
Growth.
Growth.
Growth mindset.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You'll be on thegrowth mindset side.
I'll be on thefixed mindset side.
Product sense is an innatecognitive ability.
You either have itor you don't have it.
Now everyone's,before everyone throws
fruit at me, letme, let me actually

(03:30):
try to support this.
Believe it or not.
Okay, go for it.
First of all, some peoplenaturally get you.
Some people are people.
People, person, people.
People people.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Salespeople, I think.
Okay.
Absolutely.
In fact, mostcompanies I go to, the
salespeople are moreproduct people than
the, than the product.
People are productpeople, especially
if they're one ofthese companies that the product
people got relabeledas product people.

(03:52):
Marketing people to it.
Yeah.
That's a good, yeah.
Marketing people'sa good one too.
But the kind of my,the crux of my arguing
point here is like,not necessarily it's
a fixed mindset.
I think the crux of myarguing point here in
this one is gonna bethe best product leaders
often make decisionsthat contradict
data and frameworks.
Which suggests they havea deeper intuition and
people can't do thatjust like are gonna

(04:13):
make bad decisionsor are gonna over fix
on the data, whichis another one that
you'll see online.
Actually the BrianChesky episode that
we did he talks aboutoh, I don't wanna see
you doing AB testing.
I want you to pick apass that or I think
a little nuance in hisargument was, I don't
wanna see you runninga thousand ab tests.
You know what I mean?
Like, ab tests areokay, , use them after
the initial intuition.

(04:34):
Don't use 'em as theintuition of like, I'll
just test literallyeverything in the world.
Number one.
Number two the speedof decision making that
is required in moderndevelopment orgs,
especially if everyone'susing AI centric tools.
And the amount offeedback that you
can get back andforth real quick.
Requires that you makesome decisions quickly.

(04:54):
Yeah, right.
Product centric,product sense decisions.
And if that skill'slike not developed, it's
only gonna acceleratethe rate at which you
make poor decisions.
It's not necessarilygoing to improve,
you know what I mean?
There's no AI toolthat is necessarily
gonna improve yourdecision making.
That's done throughlike talking to
people and actuallyactively listening to
what they're saying.

(05:15):
And, and like, again,I'm, I gave you all
those points to get youback to my main point.
It's not necessarilythat they don't have
product sense, it'sthat they have a bunch
of stuff stacked up,stopping them from
developing and actingon a good product
sense, whether it'sinexperience or like
a bad organizationthat's just like
overloading them withgarbage or slow decision

(05:37):
making 'cause they'relike consumed in.
Analysis paralysis,that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's try to unpacksome of that.
So, I know that was,I kind of threw the
truck at you to tryto get Yeah, yeah.
No, that's fine.
I, I'm gonna unpack the truck.
Yeah.
Unload the truck.
A dump truck.
So we, we startedtalking about people
that find themselves ina product role, right?
Th they don'tnecessarily have the
background in productor anything like that.

(05:59):
I mentioned marketing,internal sales is
another avenue, right?
Yeah.
People working withsalespeople, but
really not directlytalking to customers.
And now this is kindalike a natural thing
for them to for theorganization at least
to say, Hey, we needyou to be salespeople,
but we'll just make youproduct people for now.
Mm-hmm.
So I guess where I'mheading with this is
like, there's reallynot an origin, if you

(06:20):
like, of where productpeople emanate from
there's not really Apath to product Sure.
As such.
So you don't, you don'tgo to college and say,
I wanna become a productmanager necessarily
I think now maybethere's some classes
or courses that peopletake the biggest of
big schools are feedersfor like Google and
Amazon and those guys.
They have productmanagement programs.

(06:41):
But academia doesn't necessarilythough, right?
Is there, I mean, thereare programs like that
at Stanford and thosekind of schools around
those faang companiesor something like that.
Maybe.
But how many peoplecan really take
part in that, right.
Only the generally thebold and the beautiful.
Sorry.
I was gonna say Rich,but I didn't wanna say
that on the podcast.
I was trying tothink of another way.
Rich kids.
Rich kids.
That's who, yeah.
They're not,they're not so poor.

(07:02):
Alright.
So I think that's oneof the things to bear
in mind is there,there's not a path
to becoming a productmanager from early on.
I will give up that one.
I'll seed that groundto you and you can
win on that one if saylike, yeah, there is
no normal entry intoproduct like I was
listening to there,there is no normal
entry into product.
I was listening toShohbit intentional
Product Manager podcast.
And he had a guest aguest or two actually.

(07:23):
I think I listened to a couple.
I love, I listen tolike six or eight
episodes in a day.
'cause his episodesare like 12 minutes.
Yeah.
And a couple guestshe, one of the first
questions he asked himis like, well, what's
your, what was yourentry into product?
And they're like,I didn't have a
traditional entry into product.
I did X, Y and Z and X,Y and Z. That is, that's
everyone's traditionalentry into product
is you didn't have anentry into product.
Because if you toldme, well, I was a

(07:44):
product manager at thebeginning of my career
in 1990, I'd be like,stop next episode, I'm
not listening to this.
Product doesn't fallinto your lap in that
sort of scenario.
You fall into its lap.
So you kind of justswim you go with it
so that's part of thedifficulty we have.
I think the otherthing is when you go
into a company andyou'll bestowed a title
product, something youstart to work on what

(08:07):
you think is the rightway to proceed with that
product or maybe productline after a bit.
What we don't haveis you don't have any
guardrails as to whatyou should be doing.
What you don't havementorship, you
don't have all ofthese things that.
Potentially could help mold yourcareer into product.
So what I'm hearingis, sorry, didn't
mean I hear what yousay is you, you're

(08:28):
welcome, julie!,early on the podcast.
It's early on the podcast.
A couple points thatI heard in there were,
you don't have a quotetraditional nobody has
traditional, right?
You don't have atraditional upbringing
and product.
what you do is yougain cross-functional
experience eitherengineering, design,
sales, marketing,wherever you came from, you get
cross-functionality andthat multi-disciplinary
kind of perspectivethat you need to be a

(08:51):
systems thinker and beeffective in product.
The other thing I heardwas successful products.
The successful product managersoften cite mentorship.
And I heard you talkabout mentorship Yes.
As a big one.
And then and then youdidn't exactly say this,
but pattern recognitionwas another one that
I, that came to my mindwhen you were talking
about the examples.
I think when you firstget, get into the, into

(09:14):
the foray of productmanagement, you don't
have that, right?
Yes.
You're, you're justbeing immersed into it.
So you're learningthings like financial
skills right.
Which you probablynever had to do before.
It's cross-functionality.
Yeah.
Cross makes.
So it takes time toget to that point.
Where you see somethinghappen again and
you go, wait and thepatterns start to form
but what is underneaththat is really this.

(09:34):
Wave of building onyour own experiences
but you're still flying solo.
And that's, that's hard.
It's very hard.
So if you are a productmanager on, let's say
some sort of fm CGtype of product, right?
I don't know, detergent,laundry detergent,
you learn a lotabout that, right?
But then you can'tjust move from there
to something else maybeAI powered software or

(09:57):
something like that.
Different dynamics, right?
Different products.
So you have tolearn more skills.
You layering skillson top of skills
you've acquired,and that takes time.
That, that's really my point.
It takes time.
You can't just suddenlysay I've arrived.
I think the crux ofyour, it's a learnable
skill is, it's alearnable skill, but.
You need the rightenvironment and you need time in

(10:17):
that environment,and then you can
learn the skills.
If you never are givenenough time with one
team, if your teams areconstantly shuffled,
If you're kind ofmoved around to other
products, if you'renot stuck in one domain
or if you don't talkto the customers,
Right.
You kept in theback of the house.
That's a recipefor never learning
product sense.
So really, I mean, Ithink we could wrap

(10:38):
it up by saying thelearning, it's, it's
learnable A Yeah.
And B, the learningis through the
school of hard docs.
All right.
And, and on my side,it, it is learnable and
I will agree with you.
With a whole bunchof stars next to it's learnable.
Ah, I like it.
There's a doublestar, I think, next
to it's learnable.
The takeaway hereis whether it's an
eight or learnedcreate structured
feedback loops inyour organization to
accelerate the patternrecognition, the

(10:59):
understanding that like,there's something that
needs to be learnedhere and you did
learn it, you didn'tlearn it, whatever.
And then make thedevelopment of product
sense more intentional.
Yeah.
Not to leverage yoursense of risk taking
and risk managing aswell with this because
everyone has a differentthreshold for risk.
Right, right.
Alright, let's moveon to point number
two, which is thepromotion problem.

(11:20):
Organizations frequentlypromote high performing
individual contributorsor domain experts into
product leadershiproles without assessing
their product.
Intuition by productleadership role, by
the way, om, I meanthe people who hire
product managers andthen that creates the
bad product sense.
The, the, the Towerof power over here.
The bad products.
That's right.

(11:41):
Obscure bands from theni from the seventies.
I'm pulling out,sorry, obscure bands
from the nineties.
That's, I don't think so.
It's really a hasof cards that's
being set up here.
It it, I it is, this isa lot of product places
I've been at where likethe people at the top
in product they havevery product sense.
Absolutely agree.
But, but they got there.
They didn't get there from theirproduct sense.
That's right.
They got there because they weredomain experts.
And listen, we need ohm,we need deep expertise

(12:02):
running the business.
We need excellent communicatorsin those spots.
Ohm Ohm, we can't haveyou in those spots
because sorry, sorry.
I got, I got a wholebunch of reasons and
they're not good.
I think the difficultyis if you are actually
looking to put somebodyin a role like that,
who would you pick?
Somebody who's a greatcommunicator, somebody
who perhaps understandsthe domain as widely
as possible amongstthe other people?

(12:24):
Or would you pick somebody who.
You believe can learnthis stuff, right?
It's difficult.
Well, we just gear shifted theconversation.
'cause now we'retalking about the
person that hiresour product manager.
Well, yeah, exactly.
But that, that's theperson they hire though.
That's will in turnhire more, right?
But that's, that'sdangerous for that
person, not that product sense.
Very much so.
Because now it's notlike the director

(12:45):
of development, forexample maybe it
is and I'm wrong.
Let's explore this for a minute.
In the matrix organization, in amodern organization your
director of developmentthey have some say
in architecture anddesign and stuff like
that, you probablyhave an enterprise
architect for that.
You probably have a team lead orsomething like that,
Right.
Like your directorof development.
They're probably onlyworking on the most
strategic of stuff.

(13:05):
And also they'redealing with people
issues because they'rea supervisor, they're
hiring manager, they'rejust an admin role.
And in largerorganizations, that
takes up the majorityof, I worked with a guy
one time that constantlycomplained because I
worked with him whenhe was a individual
contributor, and theygot promoted into a
development team lead.
And of course, as adevelopment team lead,
they expected it tobe on all the teams.
So every day he was theguy going to like five

(13:27):
daily standup scrumsessions and, and hey,
and you know, you and Iare like, well that's,
I mean, that's silly.
Like you, you can'texpect that guy
to get work done.
And he knew it.
And he would tellpeople like, I'm not
getting any work done.
I'm just like beingaware of everything
because this is what leadershipconsiders my job.
Now they want meto know everything
that's going on andbe the one-stop shop.

(13:49):
When they want toknow something that's
happening on one of theteams, that's my job.
He's like, I justgo to meetings.
I don't code anymore.
I hate it because I love coding.
I'll tell you alsothat guy was a very
good developer.
So taking him off a team hurt.
It hurt me.
'cause he took, theytook him off my team.
Yeah.
So from his own personalperspective though did
he feel like this was apromotion or an emotion?

(14:11):
Honestly, if you writelike coding, I think he
liked money, you know?
Well, yeah.
So this is the problem, right?
People will takethe role and then
they'd have peopleworking under them.
Now you have to deal with peopleissues, right?
So the administratorcomes into play.
You gotta do theirreviews, right?
You gotta make surethat they have skills
and all of this stuff.
Paperwork, basically.
But now, but now wewe're gonna hop out
of the developmentenvironment Yes.

(14:31):
And then hop back into product.
Into product.
So this is a personwho was an excellent
IC contributor.
Developer.
Yeah.
And so then that'sthe promotion path
is like you're agood IC developer
with coding and nowyou manage people.
And now like, go backto what we talk about
a whole bunch on thispodcast is like, at
what point did thecompany invest skills
so that you becamebetter at managing

(14:52):
people and workingwith people and now
you have a big issue.
So on the productside, the company,
again, this is justwhat I've seen, this
is not indicative ofthe career as a whole.
In my career, it'sactually, been quite
the opposite usuallythe company will pick
the product manager,who's the most
eloquent, who's themost political, who's
the best at presentingin front of people.

(15:13):
And they'll say, okay,I don't care if you have
product sense or not.
I need a good presenter.
I need a goodspeaker to represent.
And then they'llthrow them up there
and usually thatperson does not have
good product sense.
So I can offer youreal life examples
from my own career, inthe companies that I
work for that shouldremain nameless, we
have demonstratorsthat really know how
to demo the product.
Remember that'sa different thing

(15:35):
than being a goodproduct person.
What they're doing isshowing off the best
facets of the product.
Yeah.
And they can stand upin front of a crowd of
200 people and do this.
It's great.
These people progressin air quotes in
their career by goingfrom a demonstrator to a product
marketing manager.

(15:55):
That's their role, right?
So now they're a productmarketing manager.
They've alreadyinherited the word
product in their title but alsomarketing, and they
stay there for a bit.
Essentially what they'redoing is accompanying
salespeople outon sales calls and
conferences or whatever.
But practically,they're really still
doing demonstrations.
I don't have aproblem with that.
I'll tell you, the problem isthe next step.
So then they getpromoted into product

(16:18):
managers, right?
Because they've been around a, awhile as a product
marketing manager.
So now it's an easytransition from there.
Typically whathappens, what I find
is a company has.
Very few marketingmanagers or directors or
marketing of any kind,but compared to product,
because they may havemultiple products.

(16:38):
Or even multiple product lines.
So then more individuals.
The thing that gets mefired up is like the,
that, that promotionpath that you're talking
about, that like, oh,we need someone that's
good at talking to goalong with the sales
team and connect whatthe sales team's doing
back to our productteams or whatever.
And it's like, it'snot you, Mr. And Mrs.
Like the, that thatdevelopment track with
the developer, right.
Because they were acompetent developer
that launched theminto the people side.

(17:00):
This is the opposite of that.
Yes.
It doesn't matter ifyou're a competent
product person or not.
Yeah.
You are gettingshoved up anyway.
Yeah.
You're getting shovedup because of your other
skills, your other softskills, which should be
for us in our podcast.
It should be for our listenersin this podcast.
It should be a wakeup call to be like,
oh, people aroundthe business are

(17:20):
grabbing people withall these skills that
your typical scrummaster, whoever would
have maybe they don'thave deep technical
domain experience.
But again that, weyou started with your
arguing point is like,that's us learnable.
You need to spendtime, get the right
mentorship, stufflike that, right?
The things that wouldhelp most businesses
in this category arethings that companies

(17:41):
are undermining by nothiring new workers.
They're undermining themselves.
Promotion timelineswhen they spot somebody
who's a good talker.
Who's good in frontof people who's kind of slick on
the presentation,that kind of stuff.
Who's a somebodywho never complains.
Look for a futurepodcast on that, right?
The timeline that theywanna grab those people
and move 'em up intolike this sales quote

(18:01):
more strategic role.
You know, the timelinedoesn't allow for them.
If I'm taking piecesof your argument
from section one.
The timeline to getmentorship, to stay on
teams, to build thatcross functionality,
that timeline is itdoesn't work for this.
I need that person.
Never afforded that.
Yeah.
No, I need that personin this other part
of the business tosupplement my sales
team or supplementmy marketing team.

(18:22):
Most companiesare sorely lacking in marketing.
Totally lacking inmarketing and there
are marketing peopleout there that can help
you, but they're like,none of those marketing
people have domainexpertise or product
management expertise.
And something that younoted like, well maybe
you have a productmarketing manager, and
they're like a mix ofthose skills, right?
Or maybe you getsomebody and you sort
of treat them likea product marketing
manager, but then yougive them that director

(18:44):
of product title.
But really what you'relooking for is a product
marketing manager.
Yeah.
But when most smallcompanies, they're not
gonna hire a productmarketing manager 'cause
they don't know what is.
Not only small, I'dsay even some medium
sized companies don'tknow how to get that.
Yeah, and it makestotal sense to me.
But the timeline it's,I guess it's more
than, I guess what I'marguing is more than
just the timeline,it's the timeline and

(19:04):
also the expertise toknow like, oh, what I
really need is I needmore marketing and
positioning out of myproduct management team.
And the productmanagers could do that
if I asked them todevelop that skill.
Or I can hire aspecialist in, or get
some contract workor whatever, . Yeah.
I'm sort of arguingtwofold is , the domain
expertise is there.
You need moremarketing out of them.
They haven't spentthe time to go deep

(19:26):
with the developmentteams or the domain
expertise and you'repicking them up for the
skills they do have andyou're using them for
different purpose otherthan product management.
So the confidencethat got someone
promoted either thatperson's confidence
or the company'sconfidence in them or
whatever it createsthese knowledge gaps.
The more they getpromoted, the higher
they get promoted.

(19:47):
The bigger the gala looks, theworse it becomes.
Yes.
The more wider thatlike, I almost wanna
call it rot spreads.
Like it's not rot,but it's like the,
the wider that it'slike, it's like it's,
you don't even knowthat you have these
gaps in your skillset.
And as you hire peoplein, because now you're
a director of productand you don't even know
you have these gapslike the, the wider that

(20:07):
expanse becomes to yourealizing, oh, a lot of
these issues I'm seeingthey're not individual
people's problems.
They're my problemsbecause I hired everyone
that like, looks likeme, talks like me,
thinks like me you know?
Right.
So you end up witha bunch of mes.
I think what you'resaying is that the
quicksand gets widerand wider and people
don't see that ifyou are one of those

(20:28):
people, you don'tnecessarily see this
as a detractor becauseyou're getting promoted
at the end of the day.
Well, I mean that's true.
Like organizationsrarely demote or move
people out when youhave a bad product
leader with a badproduct sense they're
just gonna recycleproduct managers.
Like they're not,again, going back to
our m and a podcast.
Like they, no one's evergonna wash out the lead.

(20:49):
I mean, at the pointwhere that bad product
leader gets washed out.
I mean, your businesshas gotta be pretty bad.
Oh yeah.
A lot of damage.
Damage at this point.
So just like in thatpodcast, if you're
in that situation,what should you do?
Keep that resume updated.
Have a drink, have adrink, and then keep
that resume updated.
Have a drink or two,and then update resume.
The sorry, there wasone other thing I
wanted to hit in here.
If we're gonna stay ondangerous side effects.
Sure.

(21:10):
I like the dangerousside, dangerous side effects.
Take two and call mein the morning for
these dangerous side.
The arguing Agilepodcast cannot ascribe
medical it's advice.
That's right.
Advice of any kind.
That's right.
That's right.
Or, or advice actually.
Or any of any kind.
That's right.
What will happen inthis case before this
bad product leadergets washed out or
Honestly, the peoplethat supervise them
probably will get washedout and then they'll go
along with 'em anyway.

(21:30):
There's tons ofcollateral damage, it's
already taken place,it's, they will, before
this happens, they willdouble down mm-hmm.
On the failed approach.
Because again, theydon't have the typical
product management if Itry to do something as
a product manager andit doesn't work, I just
pivot, we do somethingelse there's no pretext,
there's thrashing ortrying to make, you
know what I mean?
Trying to make a caseor ego or whatever.

(21:51):
we just run a test, against themarket, and then we
do something else.
You're being datadriven largely, and
then you're sayinglet's learn from what
we've just transpired asopposed to I'm not gonna
appear to have failed.
Well, so we spentmost of this category.
we must have spent.
15 minutes.
Talking just aboutthe against in this category.
Just about the againstin the category of
like the bad folksare getting promoted

(22:13):
and no one's doinganything about it.
Probably because that's true.
And there's justnothing happening.
There's nothingbut like on, on the
other organizationscan develop product
sense into people.
So like everybodyhas self included, ha
came from outside ofproduct management, got
promoted into productmanagement and developed
a product sense.
So there's gotta bea four side here.
There's gotta be,intentional leadership

(22:35):
pressure to help peoplelearn product thinking,
learn technical slashbusiness expertise.
So maybe if they camefrom the business,
they gotta learntechnical, they came
from technically learnthe business, right?
That kind of thing.
You can get coachingfrom outside of
your organizationif you're like,
oh, okay, we got noproduct managers here.
Or maybe like I'mthe CEOI know I've
promoted, a productperson well over their

(22:57):
head 'cause they don'thave good product
knowledge or whatever.
Like get coaching forthem, buy it for a
certain amount of time,help them develop that
product sense maybe.
Yeah.
I mean, a long timeago there was some
attempt at doing thatwith people that just
joined the company outof maybe business school
or whatever it was.
You know, by havingthis rotation program in place
where you go througha couple of months

(23:18):
in every area Yeah.
Every domain area to learn.
It wasn't necessarilyat that time it
wasn't necessarilyfocused on product.
Sure.
But I'm thinking ifyou're coming in as
a potential productperson that you're
just being hired intoa company, you could
do a lot worse thansending that person on
rotations for a coupleof months, whatever
duration might be.

(23:39):
Across different domains.
So they learn a bitabout marketing,
they learn a bit about finance.
Foundational thingscan help synthesize
their background.
And they can learn ina safe environment.
They're not the onesmaking the decisions
that potentiallycould be catastrophic.
Because they don't havethe experience, but
they're building onwhat they're learning
every single time.
Maybe that's anoption, I don't know.

(24:01):
But as regular listenersof the podcast know,
I'm a big, big fanof making sure that
people are takenunder more experienced
people's wings.
Right.
So the journeyman typeof situation, which does
not exist in productas far as I know I
don't think that existsanywhere where you
can join a company andsay some experienced
product manager is gonnatake me under, under

(24:22):
their auspices and andteach me stuff, and
I'm learning as I go.
Yeah.
Well that, I mean,that's the job of
product leadership.
I mean, even in theTransformed book.
Yeah.
Where we're MartyCagan kind of pivots
in the product leader.
Like that's their job.
I mean, that's their only job.
Going back to what yousaid is like, well,
if you're maybe yourproduct leadership
is like they're incharge of, if they're
the equivalent ofthe engineering

(24:42):
leadership where likethey're the resource
managers, they'rethe hiring managers
for the department.
Like your main job asa hiring manager is
the development of yourpeople, and then you
have all this stuff,skills development.
That's the numberone thing development
of your people.
Making sure you havethe right talent for
the right things.
When people ask yourteam to get done,
We should probably havea podcast specifically
on, hey, you've beenpromoted to a manager

(25:03):
for the first timebecause there's a
change that happens.
you're a greatindividual contributor
and now you're a people manager.
Your job changes Idon't care how good
you can code, that'snot your job anymore.
Your job is to enablethe five people, eight
people, whatever thework for you Yeah.
To code really good.
And I don't carehow good you can code anymore.
'cause none of your,none of your scoring
is based on howwell you can code.

(25:23):
And obviously thecompany's not putting
any effort intohelping you figure that
transition out, butthat's a real transition
that has to happen.
And in product, ifyou were never good
at product before,I don't know how
you bridge that gap.
Yeah, I agree.
You know, it's sortof like, I mean, get
help, that's how Yeah.
You get help.
Right, right, right, right.
This is sort of like yousay you learn enough to.

(25:44):
You know, pilot a small boat.
Mm-hmm.
And then suddenlyyou're promoted to
be a captain of alarge vessel, right?
Yeah.
Now you got other people, right?
So your responsibilitychanges your success
is vested in your team Success.
In the case of commercial, yousee organizations.
Yeah.
See my experience ismore like you've learned
to fly a small aircraftlike a little Cessna.

(26:05):
And now you're like, Iknow how to fly a small
Cessna like put like300 people on the 7 47.
This is where thesenewbie captains go.
What does this button do?
And I wonder whatthis button does.
Yeah.
Very dangerous.
Let's see.
Yeah.
The only other thingin the four category
that we didn't coverhere is cross industry
experience actuallyhelps leaders with their

(26:26):
pattern recognition.
Yeah.
The internet is likea big sign wave.
It just goes up anddown and up and down.
Sure.
And now LinkedIn isstarting it like with AI
slowly on the decline.
Oh no, Brian, is that true?
Can he just say that?
Yes.
With Aon on the declinepeople realizing that
like the models arelike not really getting
much better there.
Like actually Claude'sgetting like a lot

(26:46):
worse as they tryto like keep up with
growth in the scale.
The internet slashLinkedIn, 'cause
it's mainly LinkedIn.
It's starting tolike, go back to, ooh
everyone needs specialtyproduct managers.
My little specialniche like that's fine.
And then like that,that's the LinkedIn
sine wave of like up anddown and up and down.
But cross industryexperience and exposure
to d the way differentpeople do things is

(27:08):
very good to helpyou rec because the
patterns that happenin, you know natural
gas, electric deliveryand the patterns that
happen in SaaS softwareand the patterns
that happen in B2Csoftware okay, they're
not that differentat the end, end of
the day they're not.
Yeah, it's, it'shonestly, if you talk to
the people that matter.
You really find outand learn how to show
them progress quickly.

(27:29):
You can really succeedin any of those places.
Agree.
Absolutely agree.
So what is beingdone though, right?
To, to kind of nurture this?
I, I mean the what youstarted with get help.
If you really are inover your head, there's
some self-awareness herethat really needs to
be taken into account.
Yeah.
Stop trying to blame people.
Accept some responsibility.
Go listen to our podcaston extreme ownership.

(27:50):
'cause that helps a lot.
You were pretty temperedin the podcast on
extreme ownership.
Yeah.
that book has a lotto teach you about
accepting that youhave some gaps.
I understandleadership seems like
they're pressing youto do everything.
You don't have to doeverything That's right.
Except where you'renot good at everything.
Go get some help.
You know?
If you've gotten some help and.
It's not punchingyour head, go get

(28:10):
some different help.
But again, there'sonly so many times
you can be like, oh,nobody else can help
me break through.
before.
You have to startintrospecting a little
bit to say that maybemy opinions and beliefs
are the problem, butimplement product
sense like the productsense assessments.
So really think aboutlike before promo, if,
if you run a businessbefore promoting anyone

(28:30):
into product leadership,you need to think about
the assessment of theirproduct, sense of how
successful they've beenbecause again most of
the people that I'veseen that got promoted
to this point they'rewilling to do what
leadership tells them.
That's right.
And, that's whatthey're really looking
for in many cases.
But I guess if somebodyactually would listen
to this and they'reactually listening
with their listeningears on, they'll
hear like, oh, yeah.

(28:51):
Yes, I do wanna be successful.
Yes, I do want it tobe a long term thing.
And although thesepeople are really
great sales andmarketing people I
need to help themdevelop their product.
Sense.
Indeed.
Yes.
And then that meansgetting help for them
and obviously alsomaking them aware
that like, hey, theyneed it, and yeah, you
need to be helping.
Yeah.
Cool.
We're back on sectionthree, the feedback

(29:13):
loop dilemma.
Product decisionsoften have delayed
consequences, makingit difficult to connect
actions with outcomes.
This creates challengesfor both learning
product sense andrecognizes it when
someone lacks it.
Which is a big problemfor me, is like, you
don't know someone'sterrible until
they're on the job.
6, 8, 12 months.
And then by that time,a lot of, I didn't

(29:35):
know if, whetherI wanted to accuse
millennials right now.
Like, I don't know, Idon't want to target one
group, , by that point,a lot of millennials
are looking for theirexit 12 months yes.
Ooh, boy.
I'm gonna throw outthe against just to
keep this podcastmoving quickly.
Product complexity makesmeaningful learning
like this impossible.
How long does it takejust to learn the
product and that's ifI'm getting someone

(29:56):
who's a subject matterexpert to come in,
how long does it taketo learn the product
and the subject?
Right?
At the same time.
And then make meaningful productdecisions, impactful
product decisions.
Oh boy.
Like the deck isjust stacked against
most folks right now.
I fully agree with thisbecause in product, more
so than I guess in mostother fields, there's a

(30:18):
delay in, this equationif you like, right?
Yeah.
So you make a decision,you don't know how
well that's gonnago for many months.
Yeah.
And to your point,yeah, I mean, the
younger generation,they move a lot in jobs.
This is a real issue.
So I think it comesdown to are you
really serious aboutworking in product?
Are you really interested in theproduct and the

(30:39):
company that you areworking for right now?
If you are.
Invest in yourself,and don't just jump
because it's gonna takea while before you can
become a product expert.
Perhaps not even haveto be a domain expert.
If you have those peopleat your company, you
can leverage theirknowledge and expertise.
But it's gonna take a while.
So that's one thing.

(31:00):
The other thing I wantpoint out is you've
just been entrusted tolead a product, right?
How are you gonnademonstrate success
not just for yourown self, but to
your organization?
If it takes months, ifyou're not willing to
invest the time thatit takes to see the
results and everythingwe've talked about so
far, get help, all ofthat, For a successful

(31:22):
outcome in the end,then what good is that?
Yeah you can leavebefore this happens,
go somewhere else,and now you're just
simply trying toconvince the next
employer to trust you.
Yeah.
That you can do it.
I don't thinkthat's a good idea.
If I'm gonna give youthe rest of my points
in the against categoryhere, just quickly so
I can get them outtathe way long product
development cycles meanbad decisions compound

(31:42):
before feedback arrives.
That's basically thecrux of the category.
and then if you're ina market that changes
very, very rapidly oryou have competitors
that are segmenting andresegmenting the market
Very quickly.
your historical feedback.
Could get outdatedvery quickly if a
competitor comes inthe agents need
to be built to useall the tools now.

(32:02):
you need MCP servers,building all the
tools yourself andhaving 80 tools is,
that's ridiculous.
Nobody does that anymore.
you need to build MCPservers and put domains
around all your MCPservers and have them
use the tools andyou don't even need
to know okay, okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Alright.
I think part of thisis also on the product
people themselves.
you're not just simplygetting binocular
vision and working onyour product alone.

(32:23):
you have to have thatsense of what else
is out there, right.
You should know that this is athing coming up.
You know, in your rearview mirror that Yeah.
Everybody's talking about it.
So get get familiarwith that it shouldn't
blindside you.
Well, I got acouple more for you.
Here is politicaldynamics often override
product feedback inorganizational settings.
And, and, and youknow what, this one
compounds because thepeople that are good

(32:45):
at politics usuallyget promoted over the
other more technicalproduct managers
that are not good atpolitics that are like,
oh, I just, I justtold you what it did.
I told you clearly likethe, the API is doing
this and if you don'trefactor your blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
And like leadership hears that.
And I'm like, yeah,but this other product
manager says like,you're just not
working hard enough.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I agree.
So those technicalproject make your

(33:05):
boss, regardless ofhow proficient they
are, they can getoverlooked by and
overshadowed, by thosepeople that know how to.
Navigate those political waters.
Mm-hmm.
What does that meanfor those people that
are you know, justsimply, well, I'm
a product manager.
I don't want to getinvolved in politics.
it means keep thatresume updated is what it means.

(33:26):
the faster feedbackloops should be
accelerating yourproduct sense and
your product learning.
So the people that arefaking it or the people
that are just makingit up and like trying
to ride their coattailsof like their manager
because they're favoredor whatever those people
should out themselves.
If the organization is an actualproduct management
organization, right?
Then those people shouldbe outing themselves

(33:47):
very quickly to saythe rest of the product
managers are doing thisrapid experimentation,
rapid feedback,building MVPs actually
talking to customers,and you're gonna
start separating the.
People that are talkingto leadership and
trying to align of like,I should be leading
the organization.
Meanwhile, everyone isout there traveling,
meeting withcustomers, talking to

(34:07):
people, finding whatpeople really want.
But if your organizationhas no, this is why I hate OKRs.
I hate metrics.
Ok.
R All the things,all the things, all
the performative metrics thatcorporations make up.
Yeah, because thisone thing that we're
talking about if thecompany had baked into
their metrics of like,how, how many customers
have you met with?
How many insightscame back, turned into

(34:28):
products, turned around,got successful adoption?
What are the adoption numbers?
Usually these arenot the things that
people are incented on.
You know, it's who, who,who made what decision
and where did it end up?
Like we, we don't dothose kinds of after
action retrospective is.
In product.
We have vanitynumbers and number of
applications clickedor things like that.

(34:48):
So I like, post-mortemtype of retrospectives
after action, kindof like what I
was talking about.
Peer reviews there'sa lot of things that
you could be doing inthis ab testing could
fit in this category.
I know that Brian Cheskywas kind of deriding
it earlier in thepodcast I was pointing
out, but an AB test,because somebody has
an idea no matter whothat person is, could

(35:10):
be very valuable later.
Come review time atthe end of the year.
Brian, you don't,you're not a team player
because every time Itell you, we should put
in a new agentic chatbot at the end of the
checkout experience,you tell me nobody
is asking for agenticchat bot, and it won't
bring us any money.
It'll just cost abajillion dollars.
You're not a team player.
You're not a team player.

(35:30):
Exactly.
But, but you've doneyour research and
you've figured it out.
Nobody really is asking for it.
If the against is, hey,it doesn't really matter
what your feedback loopis because like the
feedback loop is solong because of your
whatever waterfall ishcompany that's trying
to do product, right.
It really doesn't matterabout how long your
pro the, the peopleare getting away by

(35:51):
kind of ducking it andavoiding and changing
their language andnot actually doing.
Customer centrictype of activities
and then gettingpromoted because of it.
Because that's the wayleadership, leadership
always expected theproduct stuff to be
a flash in the pan.
Well, that's not theright organization for
you if you're a productperson at heart so we
fall back to our normaladvice here for you.
Well, as at the pointwe're saying, keep

(36:11):
that resume updated,that that triggers the
end of the category.
That's it.
Like an auto, I'vegot an auto scaling
rule set up where Iimmediately trigger the
end of the category.
A lambda kicks offand fires off and
says, that's theend of the category.
So here, what can you do?
What you can do isyou can start tracking
product sense bybuilding leading
indicators of goodproduct thinking,

(36:33):
not just laggingbusiness metrics.
Now that's, that's abig heady idea that
I just threw out.
How are we gonna do that?
I don't know, because it's, it'svery difficult to
do when the rest ofyour organization
is built on like.
All these laggingindicators, but it's
gotta be, you gottabe incented on it.
It's gotta be somekind of scoring
or something builtinto the framework.
Otherwise when yourleadership sits down,

(36:54):
they're gonna pick theperson that's with the
slickest presentationso I, I think what,
well, practically speaking, whatcan you do here?
What, what you could dois this, make small bets
and lead with evidence.
I mean, you're notnecessarily gonna
hit every singlething you shoot for.
But the ones you do andthe ones you don't hit.
Come back out ofit with some sort

(37:15):
of learning, right?
And just say, thisis what's happening.
Look, even the bestof product people Need
to be at least mindfulof the politics that
they're Working in so itwouldn't be a bad idea
to at least familiarizeyourself what kind
of politically, whatkind of company are
you working for?
But for yourself,you can make smaller

(37:36):
bets that way thedamage isn't too
big when somethingdoesn't work out.
So, I don't know.
I mean, that's just oneof those things that I
think about right now.
I'm just worried aboutlike the typical OKRs
and stuff like that.
The company if thisstuff isn't baked in.
It's all gonna getlost and then it's
gonna be perception.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
And then like, now yourproduct managers are
like back in the HungerGames where it's yeah.
Oh, I don't knowwho is doing what.

(37:57):
Like just make 'em,fight it out and like
pick one of 'em, givethem a certain percent.
I was at a company oncewhere the manager only
had a certain numberof percentage points
to give out for people,for raises or whatever.
So it was like theHunger Games every year.
Yeah.
Some people got 2% orsome people got 6% and
then some people got0%, that kind of thing.
Which is essentiallya demotion, right.
It also reveals, why Idon't like the way that

(38:19):
companies do incentivesand stuff like that.
A lot of time becauseyou could say like,
well, what are our bets?
You can keep a scorecard.
What were your bet?
Sure.
For the product manager,what were your bets
through the year?
And if you can't outlinecleanly, outline your
bets in business speak,and then put 'em in a
column for a quarter.
You should be able to do that.
I could easily gimmeyour biggest bet, your
most risky or biggestimpact or whatever bet,

(38:42):
throw it on a scorecardfor the quarter,
throw it in yourcolumn with your name.
At the end we'll haveall the product managers
and all the bets.
Hopefully all theproduct managers and
all the bets willnot be completely
exclusive of each other.
Right, right.
Yeah, that wouldn't be good.
I mean, no, I mean otherat that point where like
you've got like, oh,I've got four product
managers and fourdifferent bet columns.
At that point, I'm notlooking at the product

(39:03):
managers to be like,what are you guys doing?
I'm looking at thedirector, our VP of
product to be like,what are you doing?
Right?
That all theseproduct managers are
betting on completelydifferent things.
Why is corporate doesn'thave a strategy that
aligns us to be like,I wanna bet on this
category and all four,my product managers and
product lines are gonnadouble down on trying
to impact this category.
Whether it's onboardingeasing, onboarding

(39:25):
experience or tryingto get retention up or whatever.
Anyway, yeah.
Poor, poor leadership.
Anyway, there's alot in that and maybe
we should considera separate podcast
on just the falloutof poor leadership.
So I guess I'd be depressed inthat podcast.
I indeed, yeah.
Point number four.
The mentorship andenvironment factor of
product management.

(39:46):
The best product leadersoften emerge from
environments with strongproduct, cultures and
mentorship, suggestingthat the environmental
factors play a crucialrole in the development
of product sense.
So we talked about thisa little bit in 0.1.
You need mentorshipand if you don't have
mentorship, becausethere's no product
people that can giveyou mentorship at
your current business,you need to get help.

(40:07):
Yeah, yeah.
This is a whole sectionkind of, maybe we won't
spend much time here.
But I want to, throw outthe against early here
because I think it isa pretty easy category
for me to see thelittle ground on, which
is great environmentslike, because you had
a great environment,you attract great.
And, and I, I've saidthis on different

(40:28):
podcasts before thereare some companies here
in Tampa, they have topay top dollar because
they're known as likenot great cultures.
So the people whoalready have strong
intuition will getattracted to the
best environments.
And then that snowballwill just keep rolling.
And if you don'thave that to start
with, I don't knowhow you get it.
I guess a trade offto this is, well,

(40:48):
you manufacture it.
you either hire thebest people and are
willing to pay forthe best people.
Pay top dollar.
Or you build a,again, every one of
my references forsome strange reason
on the last twopodcasts, every one
of my references goesback to boiler room.
Series?
What is the, what's the license?
Series seven.
Yeah.
Series seven.
Yeah.
Who has a series seven license?
We don't, we don'thire, we don't hire you.

(41:09):
Yeah.
We don't hire you.
That's right.
We don't hire brokers.
Brokers, yeah.
We don't hire brokers.
We make 'em.
That's this category.
We make brokers becauseI'm super suspect of
anyone who throws theirPorsche keys on the
table and is like, wedon't, we don't hire
product managers.
We make product managers.
I'm gonna try tolook at this from the
perspective of your,so you wanna get,

(41:30):
you wanna get help,but your organization
doesn't really havethis culture of
mentorship, et cetera.
Yeah.
Where, where do you,what can you do?
Right?
I, I know we often saykeep the resume updated,
but what can you doif you're serious?
Maybe reach outwithin the product
community, local to you.
Go join a few meetups, perhaps.
That's true.
Yeah.
Seek mentorship in forums.

(41:51):
You'll be surprised.
I've, I've alwaysfound people to be very
helpful if you, if youapproach them with a
mindset of, I'll tell,I'll take a little
bit of your time aslittle as possible.
Mm-hmm but I wouldlike you to coach
me ask for that.
And you'd be surprised.
So there is that avenue.
Exposure to diverseproduct challenges.
The more different andunique challenges that

(42:12):
you're exposed to, themore you will start to
absorb, so much stuffin product management
comes down to mentorshipwhere have you been?
Who have you been there with?
You know, is it people that arejust like, listen,
just do what I sayget outta my kid office.
Get outta my office kid.
That was, that was weird.
Like those type ofpeople that just do
what I say I'm Brian,enough of your AB tests
and your, and yourthoughtful approaches to

(42:33):
testing the market andyour, and enough of your
Eric Reese Lean Startup.
Brian I'm sick of hearing it.
My against wasn't evenreally great on this one
because my, my againstis like, first you
get the great productpeople from other
places and you get 'emall in the same place.
And that's what buildsthe talent pool.
That attracts other people.
But that's not even true.
Anyway.
exposure to diverseproduct challenges like

(42:54):
that accelerates yourthe pattern recognition
I talked about atthe beginning of the
podcast acceleratesthat it accelerates
the creation of astrong product culture.
Meaning like the,all your product
managers togetherhave a vocabulary
about like, we'regonna test that idea.
We're gonna test itagainst the market.
We're gonna do lean startup.
Like the more, the stuffthat snowballs, the

(43:14):
more the, the harderit is for these like
imposters to creep Yeah.
Under the radar andsecretly get promoted
over everyone and thendestroy everything.
Yeah.
I think to that point ifyou have other people,
maybe they're yourpeers, maybe they're
not as product people,and you have this.
Sense of like a productguild forming where
people can sharefrom one another.

(43:35):
Compared to thecompetitive thing
where everybody'sin that corner and
they just look at thethey're looking out
to stab one another.
That, that's ahorrible environment.
Yeah.
That's a good call.
That's more like a product toxicenvironment that
I've seen in smallorganizations where
you have maybe twoor three people and
there's just no time.
Everyone's gotta just deliver,deliver, deliver.
Well that is thekryptonite of forming
actual organizationallearnings is everyone's

(43:57):
just slammed everyminute of every day.
you're basically up toworking 60 hours if you
want to get anythingdone on your own time
that's organizationalkryptonite.
You're not, you're,you're not gonna
punch ahead anyway Idon't know if anybody
if I was still doingscoring, I would call
this category a drawbecause I think we.
The pro and like thefor and against here.
I don't know.
I'm kind of on the fence here.
All like, I think ifI had a takeaway here,

(44:19):
I would say all yourorganization's, product
sense developmentstructure or environment
or how much effortthey're putting into
developing the product,sense of the other
product managers andtake, take that offline.
Like, take whateveryou oh, they don't
care about my productsense development or
my skills of any kind.
Are you creatingconditions for learning

(44:41):
or are you just hopingthat learning happens
through osmosis?
Is there an intentional rightlearning happening?
Are they getting youmentorship and is that
mentorship effective?
And are you getting thetime from the takeaways
from that mentorshipto implement things and
try things and, and,, are you tracking them?
I think of the typicalagile coach write them

(45:02):
down on a board andwe'll have your your
learnings and what yourexperiments will just
document them somewhereand help you stay
accountable to yourself.
Like they're, they'renot, you're not
accountable to anyone.
No one's yelling atyou for not doing this.
Yep.
, You know that youneed to improve.
Let me help you beaccountable to yourself.
To make sure thatyou're doing the
best thing for youin this organization.

(45:23):
And that's just likeif you're not doing
any of that in yourorganization now how do
you think you're gonnaget better at this?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I agree.
I, it's very rare tosee just organically
have that, what Icall yearning for
learning, right?
You've gotta makepeople aware that
that's what's needed.
A and then B, havethem, you can't really
make them do it, butif they're aware that

(45:43):
that's what they need,maybe they'll make
space deliberately.
Right?
And, and say we setaside time, we set
aside resources,money, et cetera.
Yeah.
To, to learn for usas an organization, to
mature along the, theproduct spectrum, right?
Yeah.
If they're not doingthat, you're right.
It is gonna stagnate.
You will stagnate,and your competitors
will leapfrog you.

(46:04):
Speaking of Frogger,speaking of Frogger,
we're gonna jump aheadand maybe get run over
by a truck becausethe next category is
data versus intuition.
Mm-hmm.
And this is, we, we hada whole podcast, which
I will, I will actuallystop and look up
because it's important.
We had arguing Agile1 54 Intuition versus
Evidence with Alexon the podcast.

(46:24):
And in that podcastwe talked a lot about
something that overlapswith this, which is
modern product, modernproduct management
emphasizes data drivendecision making.
But the most celebratedproduct leaders,
entrepreneurs, thosetype of folks, they,
they're often the onesthat have made bold bets
that have contradictedavailable data.

(46:47):
So even when I throw outearlier with the Brian
Chesky like, oh, AB testnobody needs to do that.
Why would you ever do that?
There's an intuitionversus evidence category
here, where the pushbackis like, true product
sense transcends thedata driven approach.
And you can't systemize that.
That's just a muscle.

(47:08):
You need to buildthat, intuitive muscle
you need to build.
And also, I know your pushback.
When I lay out the bestpushback, which is like.
I can't quite put myfinger on how you do
that, because if Icould, I'd put it in
a bottle and I'd sellit for a bajillion
dollars and I'd be i'dYou'd never, none of
all like a subscribe.
'cause you'd never see me again.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah.
All right.
So intuition.

(47:30):
Intuition is sometimesacquired or learned
over time, havingmade, for the most
part the right bets.
Sure.
But sometimes notthe right beds.
And then you learn, right.
So you know what doesn'twork, what works, and
you make the rightdecisions in the future.
And you call thatintuition in some cases.
Yeah.
I'm not sayingthat's the only way.
Mm-hmm.
So that is one.

(47:50):
And then the other is just.
Pure luck, right?
That happens now as luck wouldhave it sometimes you
do hit the jackpotmost times you don't.
The role of luck inproduct management oh
boy, if I could do apodcast that had no
entertainment valuebut had therapeutic
value for me, itwould be the role

(48:12):
of luck in corporateAmerica, specifically
product management.
Like I could talkfor a full hour back
and forth on justhow to get lucky.
How I've seen poordecision makers stumble
into one lucky movethat basically made
their whole career.
Yeah.
absolutely.
It's a great topic.

(48:32):
I think so too.
I think we should maybeconsider that podcast.
I don't think that's possible.
No.
We should do it at some point.
The rule of luck.
I don't think anyonewants to hear like.
No, you're successfulbusiness to Mr. And
Mrs. A corporate person.
It's because yougot super lucky the
right place, rightTime is a real thing.
I mean, absolutely.
what percentage ofthat factors in the
product management?

(48:53):
I don't know.
There is, it does factor.
It's a finite percentage though.
It does factor, butalso I would say your
product sense needsto include luck into
the product sense.
I've been at thepoint where I've
built a product whereI've been so far
ahead of the market.
Yeah.
Because I anticipatewhat the market
wants, but my timinghas been off 'cause
we were talkingabout luck, right?

(49:13):
My timing has been offwhere I didn't know
that I built something.
It totally was theright product, but
it was way too earlyin the technology
adoption curve, right?
Yeah.
Timing is critical and just likeluck, you really.
Don't have control overit so I can share an
anecdote about this.
Yeah.
And you can guess,but you might not be
yeah, exactly.

(49:34):
So that's the thing, right?
You're guessing basedon what, nothing.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So again, it then,then it goes back to luck again.
Sure.
I'm gonna share ananecdote with you about
this luck and timing.
Step into my office.
Step into my office, right?
So years and yearsago when I was
working in publishingback before we had.
Laptops and all of this stuff.
Yeah.
I mean, . So peoplewere, we, we basically
had green screen dumb terminals.

(49:55):
Yeah.
Connected to a mainframeor mini computer.
All the work was beingdone on the mainframe
or mini computer.
So the dump terminalwas just basically an IO device.
That's all it wasback in those days.
A thought occurredto us right in, in,
in, in newspapers andmagazine publishing,
you basically haveto paginate and do
a lot of hyphenationand justification on the fly.
Love penetration, it'sbeautiful, but every

(50:18):
time you're writinga sentence, it's
hyphenating the thingand it's spell checking
all of those things.
But what it's doing isthe crude version of
that was at the end ofevery whatever, second,
five seconds or periodwhen it sees a sentence.
It'll shoot it offto the mainframe to
do this comeback.
Well, the thoughtoccurred to us, what
if we can keep allof that local in the
dumb terminal, butit's a dumb terminal.

(50:39):
So we came up with thisidea that we can write
code and blow EPROMsand put them in the dumb
terminals to give itintelligence, I guess.
I don't know.
So all the work'sdone there, that
means if you have 50people simultaneously
doing this work,instead of bogging
down the mainframe,mainframe sees nothing.
It's just cruising along yeah.
It sees nothing.

(51:00):
So we came up with thisidea and we bought a
whole bunch of a promsblowing machines,
all this stuff.
Tested it out, itworked, put 'em
in dumb terminals,except for one thing.
Nobody understood this, right?
and nobody bought this stuff.
So again, was it luck?
No, not so much luck.
But the timing suckedfor the company.
Yeah.
Fast forward three years later.

(51:21):
And now everybody becameaware of this stuff.
And they patentedthe technology and
bought it from us.
Mm-hmm.
As a technology piece.
So everybody whohad shares in the
company that werepaper millionaires
still remainedpaper millionaires.
Oh boy.
But obviously theowners cashed out.
So I wanted to sharethat story because
luck is important here.
And nobody Did they,did they, did they cash

(51:43):
in sell out, bro, down?
I, I already messed up I stuff.
Yeah.
I can't remember.
It was a four point plan.
I don't remember what it was.
I, I forget what it was.
It was so good too.
I, I remember like I,I don't know is there a
this was, this was thecategory of tangents,
but also tangents.
Tangents.
I don't, I don't care.
Like the, the tangentswere all like, they were
all real good, even theones that got cut out.
Yeah.

(52:03):
Jeepers.
Ah, so if there's a takeawayhere, develop your data
intuition by regularlypredicting experiment
outcomes beforeseeing the results.
Like you do that bylike actual trial,
trial, trial and error.
Yeah.
You do, you do thatby like writing down
what your expectationis and then doing
the scorecard of thisis what happened.

(52:24):
Yeah.
You analyze yourprediction accuracy
patterns at scale for all yourproduct managers.
Like if you're aproduct leader, you
can do this for all thepeople that work for
you and then kind of,it becomes a learning
tool individually morethan it becomes like,
hold me accountabletype of thing.
I wanna know that I'm betting onthe right things.
I want to be able tosay, I'm the guy that
can make good bets andthen deliver on them.

(52:46):
I'm the guy thatcan read data and
then deliver on it.
I, that, that's acareer thing for me.
That's a point of pride for me.
Yeah.
So I wanna get better at it.
I would like you tomeasure me on it.
So the takeaway in thiscategory is like, learn
how to measure yourselfon, these are the bets
that I, these are thebets that I placed.
Look, we're at the horse track.
These are the betsthat I placed and

(53:07):
these are the resultsof those bets.
And again, this is notblack and white you
won or you didn't win.
So like, yeah, theremight be a little kind
of gray area or whateverthat might murky
this up a little bit.
Life is like that,but still most
corporate most OKRsor whatever they don't
measure this at all.
They're very black and white.
They don't, you're right.
So when you say Iwould like you to

(53:28):
measure me on it,most organizations
won't, you'll have todo this for yourself.
Yeah, do it for yourself.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I, instead of beingat the, at the horse
race, maybe we're atthe casino, at the,
at the roulette tableand you're seeing the
board, how many howmany reds and, and
blacks take that forwhat it is because
it's still luck forthe next spin, right?
Yeah.
But you can at leastsee that and then make

(53:48):
of it what you will.
so the last categorytoday is the scale and
context challenges.
Product sense requirements varydramatically across
company stages.
Industries and thetypes of products.
So what works for B2BSaaS startups might
completely fail for likeB2C, consumer mobile
or like enterprisehardware type of product

(54:09):
management, right?
So the, the, there aretwo sides to this that I
see the against side islike context switching
reveals who hasgenuine versus learned
product experience.
Genuine versus learned contextswitching reveals who
has the the genuineproduct experience?
Like the, the, theproduct sense or
the fakers or theOh, the fakers.
And then the otherside is like, well

(54:30):
the product senseframeworks they, they,
they will deliveracross any context or
business or whatever.
Like stick with aframework, stick
with a if you justapply the same kind
of principles, you'llbe successful tho.
Those are the two sides for me.
Yeah, there'sprobably more sides
than that and that'sprobably a little too.
Generalize, but let, let me,let me throw out
some against here.
Sure.
Okay.
I think what I'm reallyarguing is like if

(54:53):
you've not spent enoughtime in just product
management, you cansay traditional product
manager or whatever,whatever words you
wanna throwout it.
If you've just notspent enough, if you've
not done enough repsin the gym, that's
what I'm saying, basicproduct management.
This category I thinkis, it's going to me,
it's just going to me onthe checkbox by default.
No arguing against it.

(55:14):
I think if you justdon't do the ref,
because what I see islike the best product
leaders intuitively.
Can understand newbusiness domains very quickly.
This is analogousto really agile
coaching even, right?
So if you haven't spenttime across different
domains in differentsituations, coaching
situations, thenwhat are you doing?

(55:36):
Honestly, to co-optwhat you just said.
I think it's thedifference between
a team coach and anenterprise coach is
actually what we'retalking about here.
So, yeah, you've gottado the reps first.
I think I like thatanalogy though.
I think that's whatwe're talking about
is like, hey, youare a team coach
and you're coming inclaiming you can coach.
All of the team coachesand their teams, and

(55:58):
there's like two dozenteams in the program.
There's 300 peoplein the program.
And you're saying,because I coached one
team successfully inthe past I automatically
should be able to saythat I can coach, At an
enterprise level whenyou know that I don't
think that's true.
I don't think that's true.
I think that thereneeds to be reps put
in, there needs tobe some mentorship.

(56:19):
There needs to besome shadowing.
Yeah.
There needs to be somebuildup to that point.
Yeah, I agree.
I think just it, productcoaching, whatever,
it doesn't matter.
Everyone has.
Strengths and weaknesses.
So when you talk about scaling,you can scale your
strengths, but you'realso automatically
going to scale yourweaknesses as well.
Ooh.
So it's gonna belike the good, the
bad, and the ugly allscale up together.

(56:42):
Ooh, scaling your weaknesses.
Oh boy.
You just, that'sanother podcast I
want to do right now.
Scaling your weaknessesthe four like, product
sense transfers acrosscontext, , like I do it
with one team, I can doit at scale I mean like
let's take that personthat we really went hard
on at the early, earlypart of this podcast.
The person who likeleadership grabs him.

(57:03):
They're like, Hey,you, you got kind of
weak product sense,but you present well.
You look good.
If you were like hangingon by a thread in one
domain or with like afew teams or whatever
when you scaleeverything goes out the
window at that point.
Sure you know this asa team coach when you
scale something nomatter how successful
it is, everythinggoes outta the window

(57:25):
when you scale.
If you are the directorof product, you have
five, six productmanagers under you.
If you're a singleproduct manager making bets with
your team and thencashing those checks,
that's one thing.
But if you have fivepeople that you're
advising and coachingand you are that coach,
now you are the productsense coach, right?
Telling and doublechecking people's bets
and stuff like that.

(57:45):
Now you're in that role.
Now you scaled thatyour suggestions and
your coaching advicenow have an impact.
The whole crew of peopleand a whole program or
maybe multiple programs.
Now what you say makesa huge financial impact.
Now you're ridingthat 7 47 really,
you're piloting it.
So you are insecuritiesand weaknesses do

(58:07):
scale just likeyour strengths do.
Mm-hmm.
And that's often misunderstood.
People focus on thestrengths mainly, but it's those
insecurities that youhave to be mindful of
because they will comeback and bite you.
Yeah.
When they do, it's too late, so would you say that
frameworks like theLean Startup or system
thinking like theDeming system thinking

(58:27):
that they transferacross industries,
product environments,that kind of thing?
Absolutely.
Those fundamentals are solid.
Yeah.
Right.
But oftentimes people either.
Don't have them orlearn them they've
heard of them.
Not really havingpracticed them at
all that's what we'retalking about is scaling
the inadequate, I guesstrying to be kind
well in inadequate.

(58:49):
so the way that I readan inadequate on my
arguing against sideis like the people with
the industry specificknowledge I think about
this in the governmentspace, the people with
the industry specificknowledge they can't
transfer the, thatproduct management skill
to other areas easilybecause their niche
is so deep that it'shard to pick up those

(59:10):
learnings and transferthem to another industry
Here is like if you'relight on the I feel
people beat up productmanagement in LinkedIn
all the time about this.
One of you, you like the, your.
You come into productmanagement, either
through technicalknow-how or through
subject matterexpertise know-how.
So if you came inthrough subject matter
expertise, know-how,and you never were
the technical side.
And now you move fromyour subject matter

(59:32):
expertise, super deepsubject matter expertise
to another businessdomain because you've
got a different job now.
You now you don't haveany technical skill.
And now your subjectmatter expertise has
been invalidated orit's been so long since
you've been a productmanager and not doing
the job day to daythat the subject matter
expertise has likeevolved and passed you.

(59:53):
Yeah.
Pass you.
So now, your subjectmatter expertise
is also outdated.
So your productmanagement skills
outdated and yoursubject matter expertise
is outdated and nowyou're in real trouble.
You have no ACEs inyour head, right?
And, and, and themore I would before
you start, I knowwhere you're going.
I know where you're going.
I just wanna make thatminefield even more
dangerous for you.

(01:00:14):
A daylight chargeacross a minefield.
They'll never expect that.
And now you are incharge of a whole
crew of other productmanagers and with
outdated knowledge.
'cause the market movedon with no real product
sense because you neverhad to develop it.
Right?
Now you're super dangerous.
I agree.
You are very dangerous.
But the thing aboutthis is, if you are
that person, right,what do you do?

(01:00:37):
But before you cananswer even that
question, are youaware that this is
really what's going on?
So if you're notaware, that's the most dangerous
situation you are here.
You don't even knowwhat the dangers are
and that's a problem.
Let's say you have someidea, the technical
side for me is easierto deal with because
you can always leanon other people.

(01:00:59):
Yeah.
To help you and kindof underscore the
technology side of it.
Bring them along with you.
That's fine.
Right.
The domain side.
Yeah.
You've gotta learn whenyou're changing domains
or industries even.
So I say, if you'rea excellent product
manager in fast movingconsumer goods, now
you're getting intosome other industry
altogether maybe it'ssoftware, whatever it
is, the fundamentalsdon't change, but you've

(01:01:21):
gotta learn the nuancesof your new industry.
How do you do that?
Well, that's a greatquestion I think part
of it is being open totesting product sense,
transferability, doingthat scorecard that we
talked about earlier.
Yes.
And then like rotatingproduct people across
different contextsin your organization.
Like keeping in theback of your mind or in

(01:01:44):
the side of your eye orwhatever, their ability
to adapt to the speedof decision making,
decision, quality,that kind of stuff.
There's some thingsthat don't cleanly
lend themselves that Iwould wanna be watching
out for as I'm lookingdirectly at how they're
doing the job, I'd belooking at like, hmm,
how is their decisionquality and how's their
speed to decision?

(01:02:04):
And like how is therelike a data, data
decisions being made andwhat is the, what is the
intuition versus datawaiting when it comes to
their decision process?
Like, how is that working?
There'd be a few thingsthat I would look at.
Yeah.
That when, whenyou, when you in the
traditional OKRs of theorganization they are

(01:02:25):
gonna get lost in likethey're just, they're
not cleanly measured,so they're not gonna
go into the OKRs.
That'd be what Iwould be looking at
as a product leader.
Yep.
From the perspectiveof I want to develop
the people into the.
Best product folksthat they can be.
So may, whetherit weighs into the
company's way ofdoing things or not,

(01:02:46):
I don't know, maybethat's a fight you lose
strategically just soyou can like, move on
to green your pasturesor whatever., I'd be
looking at those things.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I'd add one more tothat, which is how are
these people that are inyour peripheral vision
that you're looking atall of these things?
How are they reacting?
How are they reactingto things that, the bets
that don't pay off to,to the failures, right.

(01:03:08):
To use that f word.
How, how are theyreacting to that?
Yeah.
How are they, are theysimply taking that
and blaming somebodyelse for it, right?
Or are they owning up toit and are they learning
from it and all of that?
Listen, if you're, ifyou're, I would say if
you're blaming somebodyelse and you're like
going through this ifyou're going through
this decision makingprocess or this thought
process that we weretalking about, and
you blame people.
You're alreadylike, you're already

(01:03:30):
losing at this point.
I agree.
It does happen.
Oh, it absolutely happens.
Especially when theperson that got promoted
way too early startswashing out other
product managers.
Yeah yeah.
You're already backto keeping that resume updated.
Like that, that's thelevel we're back to.
Yeah.
And when we're backto like, the only
thing you can do atthat point is keep
that resume updated.
I think we're done.
I think we're done.
I think the conclusionhere is like, whether

(01:03:51):
product sense isinnate or learnable
either one, I'm notgonna say who won
this category or not.
Yeah.
Maybe we should alsobe asking like, how
do we identify faster?
Should we be developingthis more intentionally?
Yeah, absolutely.
Get the right questionlike prevent people
from moving forwarddecisions that.
Tank their product.

(01:04:11):
And, and then by right of that,the organization.
So like, is there ascorecard we can apply?
Can we be looking atthe, the decisions that
people not, not people.
I don't wanna bejudging people, but I'm
talking about the work.
Yes.
I'm talking abouttalking about the,
basically the walk theboard method mm-hmm.
Of product management.
Can we be judging thedecisions that come
out of, because thatgives you a, a hook

(01:04:34):
to examine the afteraction of what made
you make this decision.
Yeah.
Because if we examinethe evidence that went
into it and it's ego,that's pretty easy
when you say, oh, oh,you keep making these
ego-driven decisions.
Yep.
You need to get betterat identifying that
your ego's in theway, and we can help
you as a person.
Okay.
We can make a real impact.

(01:04:55):
Okay.
Yeah.
Or you can say, well,oh, you keep making
these decisions.
They're based on evidence.
You make the wrong decisions.
Maybe you need to do alittle more intuition
based exploration toidentify other avenues.
Yeah.
Before you make theselike there's something
there, but in thetraditional like, oh,
oh, you just need toget like 20% more.

(01:05:15):
No, no.
User activation or whatever.
Those are not numbersthat help you.
Audit, audit, aproduct decision that
your organization made recently.
Okay.
Yeah.
Track it backwardto who made it, what
information they had,how they processed
it, and what outcomehappened because of it.
And then ask yourself,was it good product,
sense in action,or was it just like

(01:05:36):
they got lucky?
Sure, sure.
So share your findingscomment on this
video and say, Heyit was, it was luck.
Or like, somebody madean intentional based
on evidence, made anintentional decision.
Again, we haveanother podcast on
this topic that wereferenced earlier.
And and let us knowyou know, let us know
where you, where youland with this one.
So like, we kind oftalked all back and
forth about things thatyou can do, takeaways,

(01:05:58):
each category.
I don't know if if youhave a strong feeling
or takeaway out of this.
I, I, I, I will tellyou even if we take
product management outof the equation the
business leadership isgonna make decisions.
Yeah.
And like, I don't know,if I really changed
and felt one way oranother in this podcast.
No, I'm with you on that.
I think that at theend of the day, I'd
summarize it like this.

(01:06:19):
Product sense.
Is it innate ora product of your
own environment?
You know, yourcorporate environment?
Yeah.
And experiences.
I think the answer isyes or maybe well, so
with that, as long asthe answer is not keep
their resume updated.
Yeah.
Let us know whatyou think and like,
and subscribe.

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AA233 - Building Your Own Product: Ultimate PM Hack or Career Sabotage?

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