August 12, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode of Hard Calls, host Trisha Price sits down with legendary product thinker Marty Cagan, partner at Silicon Valley Product Group and author of Inspired, Empowered, and his latest book, Transformed.
Marty shares one of the hardest calls of his career and the lessons it taught him about how users respond to change. From there, Trisha and Marty explore what it means to truly transform a product organization from the inside out. It’s not about processes or giving people new titles. It’s about building trust, developing product sense and defining what a successful product operating model looks like for your organization.
You’ll learn:
- Insights from Marty’s time leading product teams at eBay
- The real reasons why you can’t run products like projects.
- Why your sales reps may be your best source of product insight
- How to build trust and product sense to make better, faster decisions
Whether you’re a product leader at a Fortune 500 or a startup founder scaling your team, this conversation will challenge your assumptions—and give you a framework for action.
📚 Grab Marty’s book Transformed
🔗 Learn more at svpg.com
Presented by Pendo.
Explore more insights at pendo.io or connect with Trisha Price on LinkedIn.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Trisha Price (00:00):
If you build software or lead people who do,
then you're in the right place.
This is hard calls, real decisions,real leaders, real outcomes.
Hi, I'm Trisha Price, and welcome backto Hard Calls where product leaders
come to talk about the business outcomesthey're accountable to and the hard calls
they have had to make to achieve them.
(00:22):
Today's guest is one of themost influential voices in
modern product management.
Marty Cagan partner at theSilicon Valley Product Group.
Marty has spent decades shaping how theworld's best tech companies build product.
He started with executive rolesat eBay, AOL, and Netscape, and
he's continued his work advisingproduct leaders across the globe.
(00:43):
He's the author of three foundationalbooks in the product world.
If you haven't read them, you should.
The First is Inspired, How toCreate Tech Products Customers
Love, the second, Empowered OrdinaryPeople, Extraordinary Products.
And the third, my personal favorite,and one we're gonna talk most
about today, Transformed Movingto the Product Operating Model.
(01:04):
Through Marty's writing, coaching,and speaking, he has helped redefine
the role of product teams movingfrom feature factory to strategic
driver of innovation and growth.
His work is read, taught and referencedby product leaders everywhere.
Marty, welcome to the show.
Thanks very much, Trisha.
Thanks for inviting me.
I'm so excited to have you here, and asyou know this is the Hard Calls Podcast,
(01:28):
and so I like to kick off each one ofthese sessions to just hear from you.
If you look back over your product career,what has one hard call that you've had
to make and what made it so challenging?
Marty Cagan (01:43):
Well, first of all, you probably people who could do the math.
Man, I've had a very long career, I mean,literally 45 years doing tech products.
So a lot of calls and alot of mistakes for sure.
Honestly.
Um I'm guessing what you're really lookingfor is hard calls that you kind of regret.
(02:05):
The hard calls that wentwell make you look smart.
But hard calls that don't gowell are humbling for sure.
And honestly, they're the onesthat really stick in my head.
The other thing I'd probably admitis the first half of my career was
as an operator really running productorganizations and, the calls for that
(02:26):
are a lot harder than the second halfof my career, which was is as an advisor
and coach where I give my opinion,but really it's whatever the person
wants to do and I try to support 'em.
That's much easier.
So the calls I do, you could say, well, Imake some hard calls on what to call the
(02:46):
product operating model in a new book.
But really it doesn't matterthat much in the world whether
or not you get that right.
I would, I mean, we all have scars.
I have scars that my last realjob was running product at eBay.
And at the time we were actuallytwice as big as Amazon, so it was a
(03:08):
very major property for the internet.
And I remember that one of the,and the good news is it was young
and it was growing and there wasopportunities everywhere and we
did a lot of very good things.
But there was one big product called,that I remember, that I personally made.
It was a huge mistake and Ireally learned a very hard lesson.
(03:29):
I don't know how much I could spend anhour telling you about how, what made
it hard and stuff, but fundamentally,we had just acquired PayPal.
And, the hardest part for people onearly eBay was just paying for something.
They were literally sendingchecks through the mail.
I mean, a lot of people were born afterwhat I'm describing, so it was a long
(03:50):
time ago, but it was, this idea ofintegrating a real payment solution.
There was some crummy onesbefore, but this was good.
Was something that we were reallyexcited about and it was one of
those rare eBay's, a marketplace.
So there's buyers, sellers, and then eBay.
It was one of the rare win win-wins.
Buyers wanted it.
(04:11):
Sellers wanted it.
We wanted it.
It was just a great win, and we testedthe hell out of it because this was a big
change to the workflow to list something,a big change to buy something we did.
We tested the hell out of it.
We did all the practicesthat, you try to advocate.
Because of other mistakes earlier youlearn that are really important to do.
(04:33):
And we did it.
And I remember, 'cause we got inthis, right before we launched,
we had a, we all sat down withthe CEO and said, are we ready?
And I'm like, we're ready.
This is gonna be, this is,we're, we're so excited.
The community knows about it.
They're excited about it.
The people that tried it loved it.
Anyway, we launched it.
It was a disaster.
(04:54):
And it was a disaster.
It's one of those things, whenever youlaunch something big, you're kind of
looking at the data because it's normalthat there's a little bit of a dip because
it's basically people are learning how itnow works and then that's normal, but you
expect it to go up again and get better.
And it wasn't.
And I'm like, finally, oh my God.
I know, I know what happened.
(05:15):
We screwed up.
I screwed up.
and, and this was a lessonthat I've got so many scars.
I share this with so many companieseven today, that it's not enough
that people love your product.
It's not enough.
They also have to be able to digest it.
And what was going on was, even thoughthese buyers and sellers were screaming
(05:39):
for this solution, that doesn't mean theywere screaming to change how they work.
And, I remembered that veryearly when I met the co-founder
of eBay, Pierre Omidyar.
He had warned me about this.
I don't even know, I actually haven't toldthis story in probably more than a decade.
(06:01):
I'll tell you the story just 'causeit's hilarious, but feel free to edit
it out if you go because it's very old.
But I thought this boy, I shouldhave listened to him harder on this.
He was explaining to me that,'cause I had only done products
for developers before eBay.
So I was a platform guy, developerplatform, and I love developer
(06:22):
tools and eBay's this weirdmarketplace with all these crazy
buyers and lots of crazy sellers.
Just very different personalities.
Very fun, but very different.
He was trying to explain to me,they're not like developers.
They're like, they're very,they view it as their website.
They view it as their solution,and and we are just the custodians.
Trisha Price (06:44):
Mm-hmm.
Marty Cagan (06:45):
And he was telling me right, in the earliest days, he
had no idea it was gonna take off.
Like this, but, he just whipped together.
He was a front end developer.
He whipped together this websitethat just looked hideous.
You can find out on the way back machinejust how hideous eBay used to look.
It was really, really ugly.
(07:05):
Probably one of the ugliest sites ever.
But it worked, right?
So it was taking off and, hewas surprised because, news.
Crew.
Actually, the San Jose MercuryNews, for those of you that know,
your internet history, they werelike the regional newspaper.
They said, this is, we'dlike to interview you.
And, and, and they took a pictureof the screen and he was embarrassed
(07:27):
because now he sees on a newspaperthis hideous screen, so he says, oh
my gosh, we just have to fix this.
And like, like they hired theirfirst designer and they just.
All he actually did waschange the visual design.
They literally just changed the color.
Uh and because they had this hideousbackground, yellow background,
(07:49):
it was just, you don't do that.
Right?
And, and anyway, he, all theydid was change the color and
they had their first online
riot.
They literally the the buyersand sellers made petitions online
to get eBay to change it back.
And he was like, I, I'm nottrying to pick this fight.
This this, and so we just said whatever.
(08:11):
And they rolled it back.
They rolled the whole thing back andhe, but he was still very embarrassed.
And, the comp, the company kept growingand then a TV station wanted to interview
him and he said, well, this is, Ijust can't go public like this again.
But he said this time he was smarter.
(08:32):
This time, what he did isover the next two weeks.
Every two days, they rolled out aslightly lighter shade of yellow.
Wow.
And in two weeks it was gone.
There were no yellow andnobody said anything.
And he was trying.
And I laughed, I thought it was funny.
But he was trying to con explainto me that change for a community
(08:55):
like this is really, really hard.
And I, I learned what he was really tryingto explain to me when I made that mistake.
Yeah, on the payment stuff.
But it's true.
And Facebook has made this mistake.
Twitter made this mistakea lot of people do.
It's it's a hard lesson to learn.
But anyway, when you do it thislong, you acculate lots of lessons.
(09:18):
Of course, learned like this.
Trisha Price (09:19):
I mean, Marty, that story is still so true for all of us today.
I'm sure.
Very true for the companiesyou advise and help.
Change management's hard and if we'rein the business of not shipping features
and celebrating, but getting outcomes,thinking about how people can consume what
we're changing and putting out there is,is a super important part of what we do.
(09:42):
So that's still super relevant.
And, and so with that, Marty, oneof the things I'm really excited to
learn from you about today and talk toyou about today is operating models,
frameworks, and you and I both knowwe, we see product leaders, product
teams all across the world, and almostall of them, not all of them, but
(10:05):
almost all of them have some sort of anoperating model, a cadence, a framework.
But a lot of times it's stillfalling short in terms of driving
the outcomes that they're tryingto achieve and accountable to.
So, Marty maybe you could justkick us off with why that is.
What are most people getting wrong?
Because I know you seeing this timeand time again was very influential
(10:28):
for your most recent book.
Marty Cagan (10:30):
Yeah.
Well, I mean obviously everybody workssome way, and, that way, they often
will call their framework or theirSDLC or their, their operating model.
So, but if you look closelyat most how most of them work,
(10:52):
it's all around projects.
It's all around featuresand projects in particular.
It's not around outcomes.
Now sort of easy to understandwhy it's not around outcomes
'cause outcomes is hard.
Outcomes is super hard.
What it's about, and honestly,even when they don't acknowledge
(11:12):
this, it's about predictability.
They're trying to optimize forpredictability, so they wanna predict
how much money they're gonna make.
They wanna predict whenthings are gonna happen.
These are, and these are notcrazy things to wanna know.
Trisha Price (11:25):
when you're running a business those are important things.
Marty Cagan (11:26):
Those are, they're running a business and so they're
reasonable things to wanna know.
the, part that gets so many companiesis they don't realize that these are
things they can't know at that stage.
So that's a different issue.
But they, they set up theirwhole way of working around this.
Though we, we call that the project model.
(11:48):
So you fund projects, you staff projects,you build projects, you ship projects.
That's waterfall basicallyis all around that.
The whole, the whole formal lifecycles,software development lifecycle, product
lifecycle, stage gate, phase gate.
These are all just namesfor the same basic thing.
(12:10):
You staff a project, you figure outrequirements, you design the solution, you
build the solution, you test the solution,and finally you ship the solution.
Right?
Then you
Trisha Price (12:20):
have a big party, right, Marty?
Yeah.
Then you have a release
Marty Cagan (12:22):
party and you, you kind of feel like you need it by
then and, but unfortunately you'vesort of given up by then on outcome.
Because you've had to make realtrade-offs on what you're gonna do.
And so, and of course when the companydecided to do it, they only funded
it for a certain amount of time.
And there's all these, there.
(12:43):
The, the consequences of theproject model are so well known
because we've seen it for 40 years.
So it is really well known.
So many people all write an article thattalks about it and they're like, how did
that's what's going on in our company?
Are you listening?
No.
It's like, this is whatso many companies do.
However, if is not all thecompanies, many companies figured
(13:06):
this out many years ago that that,that's actually all about output.
And what matters supposedly is outcomes.
And what would we do differently ifwe're trying to optimize for outcomes?
Well, okay, that's a very different thing.
Just shipping and not achievingan outcome is an empty victory.
And the irony is, the teams that actuallyship for outcomes develop for outcomes are
(13:31):
much more likely to predict an accuratedate than those that are doing projects.
So it's, it's counterintuitive, butanyway, that's, that's the case.
And so what we have been.
I mean, honestly, Silicon ValleyProduct Group, I started it almost
25 years ago, and it was just aboutsharing these techniques I would see
(13:51):
in the best companies because I was,lucky enough to work at some really
good companies that had worked thisway, and yet then I started visiting.
Because I was told you I wasdoing tools for developers.
Yeah.
I started visiting customers.
Yeah.
Early on I'm like, oh my God,how come you work this way?
(14:12):
It's crazy.
Where did this come from?
And they're like, what do you mean?
This is how everybody works in the Midwestand the East and Europe and I'm like
Wow, that does not look good.
And you're, you're nothappy with the results.
You don't seem to even like your jobsand your customers are not happy.
Why do you keep doing it this way?
And it's like, well, thisis how we've always done it.
(14:32):
This is what our leaders know.
And again, there's a realdesire for that predictability.
So what, what the latest book is allabout is just sharing the, the techniques
that we see used in the best companies.
Trisha Price (14:48):
And when people are starting to move from this project model to a
product model, what do you think thehardest hurdles for them to get over?
Is it the trust, the the giving upcontrol and empowering their teams?
You know what is it that is like the thingthat just catches everybody every time?
Marty Cagan (15:13):
A lot of things.
So everything you mentioned for sure,but more, so there's a lot of things.
In fact, the way I've really startedframing it as very much like a product.
What does it take for aproduct to be successful?
Mm-hmm.
A lot of things have to be doneright For a product to be successful.
It's gotta have a gooddesign, it's good experience.
Of course, it's gottabe technically feasible.
(15:34):
It's gotta provide real value.
It's gotta have a lot of things right.
And all it takes is really oneof those to go significantly
wrong and you've got a failed
product just like you'llhave a failed transformation.
So there are a lot of thingsyou've gotta get right.
The hardest things for, I'd say formost of those companies to get right.
(15:54):
Probably starting right at the top.
So many people want to think ofeverything we're talking about as
just a tech thing, an IT thing,but it's not, it's a company thing.
Trisha Price (16:04):
Yeah.
Marty Cagan (16:05):
And so because it's a company thing, it impacts finance,
sales, marketing, services, legal,fine, compliance, all of these.
And so all that means ifthe CEO is not on board.
Most of those people aregonna be, passive aggressive.
They'll just wait, they won't do anythingor they'll get in the way literally.
(16:27):
So the CEO really has to have, they don'thave to be experienced in it, but they
do have to understand what's going on andstep in and show some leadership at times.
Mm-hmm.
And so that's a key one.
Another key one is, and it's oneof those things when I look back
over the years, I kind of regret.
(16:48):
Never tackling the problem of the name,title, product manager because the title
product manager means so many differentthings to so many different people.
Mostly because they're describingthe project model companies.
Or even worse, 'cause there iseven worse, when you talk product
owners, there's even worse.
(17:10):
Out there.
So I always like, I don'twanna fight that battle.
I don't care what it's called.
Let's just call it a product manager.
It's fine.
It's just a different job definition.
But the job definition is so differentfor the product manager on an empowered
team in the product model than aproject team or a feature team that
(17:32):
that's one that constantly get wrong.
They get wrong because HRjust wants to retitle people.
It's so much easier to justretitle people, but it is
much harder to upskill them.
And these are very different skills.
At its essence.
A feature team product manager is muchmore project manager, which is important
(17:54):
of course, but it's not this job.
Trisha Price (17:57):
Same, it's, it's funny you say that, Marty, because of my role at
Pendo, I get to also go in and talk toproduct teams all over and, I was with
a very large company last year, and theyliterally took their entire workforce and
took everyone who had a title of businessanalyst and titled them Product Managers.
(18:22):
Yeah, that was it.
Classic.
They didn't train them, theydidn't see who had the right
backgrounds and skillset sets.
They didn't say, here'sthe difference in the job.
They just said.
Business analyst, not even productowner, not even project manager,
business analyst to product manager.
Marty Cagan (18:36):
Yeah.
So I see that it's a classic one.
It's a classic one.
And that's the, that's the,that's a big problem, obviously.
Another big problem is theway they treat engineers.
Mm-hmm.
So many of them treat 'em as
outsourceable people.
Mm-hmm.
And they literally are outsourcedin a lot of these big companies.
(18:56):
And we have to explain to them,no, in the product model, your
engineers are front and center.
In fact, they're the, they'rethe best source of innovation.
If you care about outcomes, they needto be the ones coming up with the
things that go on the roadmap, notyour stakeholders, not your customers.
It's a, again, a very different model,which is sort of what we're really
(19:17):
describing now is probably the hardestthing for most of these companies is
it's essentially a cultural change.
So we are talking about things aroundculture, about who makes decisions,
how do they make decisions, howdo they make progress, where do
ideas come from, that's different.
And so, I've never been surprisedat why it's so hard to transform.
(19:43):
Because, I mean, these are big changes.
These are not, they're big changes.
Changes, but, but the good news is thereare companies that manage to do it.
Trisha Price (19:52):
Yeah,
there
are.
And do it well.
And you're talking about you, you weretalking about the change and a lot of the
change you were talking about is sort ofin the ideation and prioritization phase,
which is obviously wildly different whenyou're prioritizing and empowered in
support of a goal versus being told togo ship something and now you're breaking
(20:15):
the problem down and trying to ship it.
But I equally see the problem interms of change on the backend.
And what I mean on the backendis iterating, launching,
constantly tweaking,experimenting, figuring out
what's working and not working.
(20:36):
And one of the problems I see isthey have an idea, companies teams
have an idea of the big goal, right?
Like, I want to get revenuein this new product, right?
But like, how do I break that down intosomething manageable and achievable
(20:58):
this quarter, this month, and thenprioritize against it is something I
just see people sort of get frozen in.
Marty Cagan (21:07):
Do you see that, Marty?
Yeah.
Well, to continue from your last questionon all the things that have to be done
right, a whole other big question ishow do you decide what to work on?
Yeah.
And that's, that's usuallyframed as prioritization when
you get down into the teams.
But at the higher level, how doyou decide what to invest in?
(21:31):
How do you decide what you're gonna do?
And, most companies in theproject model are used to doing
that with their stakeholders.
And they kind of all sort of make a bunchof proposals for how much money they
think things would get and all this stuff.
The spreadsheet,
Trisha Price (21:48):
the best Marty, like the weighted spreadsheet,
that's like the death.
When I see that, I'm like, no.
Oh no, you don't have avoting weighted spreadsheet.
Yeah, please no.
Marty Cagan (21:59):
So that's what so many do in one form or another.
I can't tell you how many I've seen.
Now, of course, if you're in the,if you're using the product model.
That's a very different way of working.
Your job, of course, is, for theproduct leaders, is to make sure
you're pursuing the most importantopportunities and responding to the most
(22:19):
serious threats, but more generally,instead of top down, roadmaps.
Instead of that, what we're trying todo is in two big things, product vision.
Which is, how are you going?
Product vision is not aboutyou, it's about your customers.
(22:40):
How is it gonna make you thelives of your customers better?
Because if you don't manage to dothat, you're not gonna sell anything.
You're not gonna, so everything,there are no outcomes.
That's right.
You derives from the product vision.
And most companies, of course, don'tdo product vision, so it's only.
In my experience, it's really onlythe companies that are trying to
do the product model that actuallydo a serious product vision.
(23:02):
If a team company tells you, we do avision for every team, it's like they
don't even know what a vision is.
Right.
That doesn't even make any sense.
So a great product agent, atleast they probably have a feature
roadmap for each one of their teams.
Absolutely.
They do.
Right?
So when they do a real product vision,that's a, for our organization,
maybe even for our entire company,this is what we're trying to do.
(23:23):
It's gonna take somewhere betweenfive, 10 years to do this product
vision, but that tells us how we'regonna make our customers lives better.
That's the first part, theproduct leaders have to do.
The second part then is you can't justgo away for five years and do this.
I wish.
We wish we could, but we can't.
We have to actually pay the bills alongthe way, and that's the product strategy.
(23:49):
The product strategy says, okay,we've got probably only order of
five to seven years, it's gonna takeus to make this vision a reality.
We've got 20 quartersbetween now and then.
Now we've gotta figure out whatproblems do we solve each quarter.
Mm-hmm.
And what we're trying to do there,like I said, is pay the bills
(24:12):
and get us closer to the vision.
The product leaders need toprioritize those critical
problems to solve this quarter.
That is prioritization.
Once they've done that, now theyhave a set of problems to solve and
a set of teams that are equipped tosolve them, and that's what they do.
They assign the problems tosolve to the product teams.
(24:33):
They discover a solution worthbuilding and deliver that solution.
It's not complicated or anything,but it's very different.
The product model from how, thespreadsheets we were talking
about, it's very different.
And most importantly, itrequires product leaders that are
skilled in vision and strategy.
This is referred to as the strategiccontext, like Netflix likes to say,
(24:56):
lead with context, not with control.
Because command and control down, this
Trisha Price (25:02):
is truly the opposite of command and control and requires a
level of trust with your team that mostpeople are pretty uncomfortable with.
Yeah.
Marty Cagan (25:13):
think you talk about that.
Yeah.
Yeah, we do.
Because that's really, if youhad to pick a single theme
undercurrent for the whole successfultransformation is probably trust.
Because, and I don't mean trust,like somebody gets a blank check.
No.
It does mean that there's, instead ofthe leaders making all the decisions,
(25:35):
even the ones that are really notin a good position to make, like
enabling technology and the whatthis customer needs right here.
They are making strategic decisions aboutthe most important problems to solve, but
then the teams are making the decisionson the best way to solve those problems.
Trisha Price (25:54):
Yeah.
Marty Cagan (25:55):
And that though is still a, significant degree of trust.
And one of the mistakes that a lotof companies make when they try
to transform is that they thinksomehow a CEO of a billion or
very, large company is just gonna
Give them that trust works.
It doesn't work that way.
(26:16):
And it, in fairness, itshouldn't work that way.
Shouldn't I agree?
What if that company just renamedall their business analysts to
product managers, they're gonna fail.
Any CEO that just trust them is, isgetting what they deserve, right?
Yeah.
So, no, we have to earn that trust.
And so the way we often frame atransformation is it's all about winning
(26:37):
the hearts and minds of the leadersof the company and the way we do that.
Is safe, small, low cost, lowrisk experiments, which it's
really using the product modelto move to the product model.
Mm-hmm.
In other words, don't make a big projectto move to the product model where you
have, you plan out a year of all thistraining and all this nonsense, instead
(27:03):
we pick a pilot team.
It's basically like an MVP Yeah.
Of what this is gonna look like,and that pilot team is meant to
show your organization and yourleaders what good can look like.
Trisha Price (27:19):
You pick an outcome for them.
Yes.
And then you start doingmodern product discovery.
Yes.
Then you show them
Marty Cagan (27:27):
experimenting.
Yeah.
Now once they see it works, especially acouple times, it's a different situation.
Now for, lots of more teams want to move.
It's that whole technology adoption curve.
We're working through that andthe company starts to feel like we
should apply this to different areas.
(27:47):
This is a good thing,but they know what it is.
And by the way, they also, at thatpoint, they know you can't just
retitle a business analyst becausethey seem what good looks like.
Yeah.
So that's why it's so important to dothese small, low cost, low risk pilot,
show the company what success looks like.
(28:09):
You are earning trusteach time you do that.
Trisha Price (28:13):
So Marty, it sounds like, just the way we were talking
about, you can't set a vision andwait five years to deliver when you're
working with these companies that aremoving to the product operating model.
They can't wait five yearsto show progress and deliver
against that model either.
So tell me like, how, how long does ittake for these companies to transform?
(28:36):
How long does it take for themto quickly start seeing wins
and, and start building moment
Marty Cagan (28:42):
Good.
Well, there's two parts to that.
Two answers to that . The first oneis, how long does it take an entire
business unit to change, for example.
And the honest answer to that istypically one to two years for a
business unit, and which means it's oneto three years or so for a whole big
enterprise with multiple business units.
(29:03):
However, the real question is howlong does it take to see results?
Because for the trust point,that's the real question.
And that's usually a quarter, maybetwo, because that's why what we do is
if you try to change a whole company,like I said, it's gonna be years.
Nobody's gonna give you that blank check.
(29:23):
If you try to say, let's pick one productteam in this business unit, that you've
said is very important, let's give thema problem to solve that you believe you
couldn't have solved this before, butis something that really is meaningful.
And let's set them up theway we, best companies have
(29:44):
sort of shown that you need.
In other words where you don't havethese competencies, you're gonna get
these competencies, you're gonna coachthese people, you're gonna show them
how good team works, and then let's runthat for a, a few weeks, few months.
Yeah.
Trisha Price (29:59):
When, you talk about measures of success or outcomes, one
thing I see people get tripped up on,on moving to this like, Hey, let's
just try something and experiment is
what's the measure?
Is it revenue?
And if they're in a sales ledcompany or a company, even with a
(30:23):
sales, large sales organization.
How can I be accountable to revenue?
because I'm not the oneselling the product.
So maybe give us a little bit of youropinion on is revenue the right metric?
Does it depend on the company?
And if it's not revenue, what areother good outcomes that product
teams can begin to set as theirnorth star and experiment to achieve?
Marty Cagan (30:48):
It's kind of a tricky one because, the higher order point is that
it's not always revenue, that that is theright thing, but it is a business result.
That's the higher orderpoint a business result.
I'll give you some real examples ina minute so this is not ambiguous.
However, sometimes it is revenue.
Yeah.
(31:08):
And, and that, and sometimesit should be revenue.
I'll give you an example ofthat in a minute too, where
it's like that is the business.
So, that's the resulteverybody cares about.
So whenever you 'cause that sameobjection, you hear that all the time,
it's like, well, we don't control.
First of all, nobody controlseverything except the CEO, right?
(31:29):
Right.
Nobody controls everything.
So if you, unless you're willing to just.
Push all the decisions to the CEO.. Yeah.
You're gonna have I say the same.
Trisha Price (31:37):
How do you think the revenue team feels?
Yeah.
When they get a crappy product andthey still have to make their quota.
Marty Cagan (31:41):
Well, well I explained because a lot of these product teams don't
even know that salespeople are commissionbased and they are like, they're
completely dependent on their paycheckgoes whether that product is any good.
Yeah.
It's like how would you liketo sign up for a quota when you
can't even control the product?
Right.
So.
And I was taught, I mean, this is one ofthe very first things I was taught, and
(32:05):
this is why management by Objectives OKRs,are so powerful, is I was taught, look,
a lot of times revenue is the issue and,the biggest driver on that is the product.
So if the product is not selling,don't you think we need the product
manager to get their ass out ofthe building and go sit with sales
(32:26):
and figure out why they can't sell?
I mean, like that's what I wasliterally, I was, it was more
colorful language than that.
That was explained to me.
But I was like, and I'm like,you can't say it's not, you
don't control the sales people.
You don't control finance.
You don't control marketing,but you control the biggest
single factor of the product.
And the whole idea of across-functional team is we should
(32:47):
go figure out what it takes.
Who else is gonna do that?
So, so don't run.
I tell people don't run from revenue asa key result if that's the right result.
Just because you don'tcontrol salespeople, that's
like a very lame excuse.
and by the way, I've made so manyfriends and sales because they're,
(33:11):
they love nothing more than aproduct person that understands.
Yeah.
Yes, for sure.
And they also know there's nothingus product team can do more important
than give them happy customers.
It's all about happyreferenceable customers.
So this is not a bad thing.
Now that said, one of the productcoaches that we work with just published
(33:33):
an article, and I was particularlyinterested in this one because it
was a company that we did not doa transformation engagement with.
So most of the successes I can pointto are the ones my partners did
transformation engagements with,because that's why they're my partners.
They're the best in the world at this.
However, the idea is that why can't youjust read a book, like Transformed, and
(33:57):
maybe get the help of a product coachin and do the same kind of success.
The product coach is Gabby Bufrem.
You may have heard her name.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
A terrific coach.
I recommended Gabby to this companybecause she was one of the very
few coaches coaches I knew thatspeaks Spanish and she's in Mexico.
And anyway, so she shows up atthis company in Mexico, it's like,
(34:20):
40,000 employee company, some travelservices company, and same thing,
they had tried to transform for years.
It was a disaster.
They finally, it's like she's, she's like,you have to demonstrate that this works.
Let's pick a product teamand let's show a real result.
They picked a pilot team and in thefirst quarter they showed a 40% increase
(34:41):
in conversion rate for their bookings.
Like, and now for those that don'tknow, that's basically revenue.
That is everything.
That is revenue comes from that.
Yes.
And that's the kind of thing that, yeah.
That's what the business needed to see.
The power center in thatcompany was the head of sales.
No surprise.
It's right.
Yep.
That's what they sellbookings at a resorts.
(35:02):
So, and it wasn't until hesaw that this really worked,
that anything really changed.
So that, and they didthat in a couple months.
Yeah.
So so's amazing.
So that's what we do.
That's, and that's a real result.
Now did her team, did the productteam have control over sales?
No.
But did they go out to theresorts and actually test?
(35:23):
Yes.
That's what they did.
Trisha Price (35:25):
Yeah.
That's amazing.
That's a great story and super helpful.
'cause I hear that a lot from my friendsin product, from customers that I talk to.
It's just, I'm not in control of revenue.
I'm like, well, you kind of are.
If you build a great product.
Marty, earlier when you were talkingabout the transformation from project
(35:48):
to product, you talked about needingat least CEO support because it
is more than just a product andan engineering way of thinking.
This is something personallyI call whole product, which is
instead of thinking about shippingproduct as engineering and product.
(36:10):
It's, does my sales team know how to sell?
It is the skew in my CPQ and, movingto this whole product mentality.
And, and for me, like I remember myearly days of Pendo and I'm, I know
we all have this bad story somewhere.
We've worked.
I came in.
(36:30):
And I looked in Jira and it saidsomething was shipped and I had
seen release notes about it and Iwent into the product, 'cause I use
our product all the time myself.
And when I went in I couldn't findthe feature to play with it and I,
oh well that's because it's fine toflag and we've only rolled it out to
so and so because we haven't actuallytaught sales and support, doesn't
(36:53):
know how to support that feature yet.
So.
It's not done.
And I'm like, well, then it's not done.
And, but then I went to engineeringand they were like, no, it's done.
Look in Jira, it's done.
how much of that.
Is a part of this transformation in yourcoaching and move to outcomes for you?
Marty Cagan (37:12):
Well, partly we just need there, there's the model,
which is really a set of principles,and then there's people executing.
Yeah.
And knowing how to do their job,you're of course class talking,
classic product marketing.
Right.
so, and, and in a world of continuousdeployment, it's normal if things
are tested behind feature flags.
(37:33):
Sure.
And we make sure that's all good rigor.
But like you said, that wasn't done.
Then maybe there was a productmarketing person that said, well,
it's not done because it's not ready.
We're on week two of a three weekrollout, or whatever they might have had.
But if there's no answer to thatquestion, then it's just hanging.
Right.
Yeah.
And, and this is a, a good questionbecause that's really execution.
(37:59):
There is not rocket science here.
I mean, this normallyhappens every single day.
So then there's a question,so who is responsible for this
consistent, reliable execution?
There are two ways companies address this.
One of 'em I think is thebeginning of the end, and the
other is what good companies do.
(38:19):
The first is they say, well,oh, we need a formal process.
So we need a release process.
And so clearly the product marketingperson didn't follow the release
process and if they would'veonly, checked their whatever check
Trisha Price (38:35):
box.
Yeah.
On template four A in the file,
Marty Cagan (38:40):
Then of course the product marketing person said that
this is a different kind of thing.
The template's not forthat, blah, blah, blah.
And, and so processes.
I, unfortunately, it's true that processesin big companies, especially used as a
substitute for thinking, because whatyou did is just common sense, right?
You came in and said, whereis this thing I, I am supposed
(39:01):
to be able to play with it.
It's not here.
What's going on?
All right.
The real, the second approachis how do you ins, how do you
ensure consistent execution?
And this comes from constantweekly coaching of your people.
So, for example, in that scenario,and I've been in exactly your scenario
there, I mean, that's not that unusual.
(39:23):
Everyone,
Trisha Price (39:24):
everyone has at
Marty Cagan (39:25):
Who is in this case, who's the product marketing person?
I probably would've said, no, let metalk to the product manager first.
And I would've said, all right,well, do you consider this done?
Maybe they say yes, but I said,but I can't see it, so let's
agree it's not done right.
So then the question is, all right, so,so why not, let's, let's figure this out.
(39:46):
And then we may realize either the productmanager didn't, do something they should
have, or product marketing shouldn't have.
But the point is, somebodyneeds some coaching here.
And that's what we'redoing one-on-one coaching.
We're helping peopleget better at their job.
And what's special I think aboutproduct is that, it's so tempting
(40:06):
to write up something as a process,but everything we build is different.
The risks are different,the scenarios different.
The data is different, and this isonly becoming more true when you
build a feature on a foundation model.
So this is, even more of the case.
So the point is what we wanna do ishelp people get better at their job.
(40:29):
And there's always areas people canget better and better, and then they of
course become the ones coaching otherpeople on how to be better at their job.
So the real key to scalability that Ibelieve in was taught and is, is coaching.
Trisha Price (40:45):
I love that.
Earlier you mentioned, and I'm, I'mcurious for, for my own purpose too, that
product managers are not project managers,but project managers are still necessary.
Where do you think that fits in, likewhen you talk about good execution?
If you have technically, if youhave all the right accountable
(41:08):
people who have the right coachingand are communicating regularly.
Do you need a project manager?
But in reality, most of theseorganizations that you and I are
talking about are fairly complexand large, and it's not that simple.
And they would spend theirdays chasing things if someone
wasn't there to help them.
So tell me your philosophy on that.
Marty Cagan (41:28):
Yeah, and this is pretty common, what I'm about to say in so many
companies is there is a crossover point.
At most startups honestlydon't need project managers.
They don't if, if you've got lessthan a handful of teams, there
are so few interdependencies, andthe easiest way to see this is
impediments and just dependencies.
(41:50):
But at a certain point it's usuallyaround a half a dozen product teams,
the number of dependencies, the numberof impediments becomes such that
could the engineering manager do it?
Could the product manager do it?
Of course.
But is that their best use of their time?
And are they able, because one modelis - some companies say, well, we
(42:11):
don't wanna hire project managers'cause Agile doesn't like them.
So what we're gonna do is we'regonna, just make our product
managers work 60 hours a week.
So that's one way, but I, that's okay.
I don't actually think, 'cause whathappens even to those project managers
that are willing to work that long isthen they're forced to choose between
urgent and important every day.
(42:32):
And they choose, they can't helpbut choose urgent most of the time.
And that's project management.
And then they don't dothe product management.
So normally I am foranything but a small startup.
I'm a big advocate for project managers.
Now there are program manager typeproject managers, product project
managers and delivery managers.
They're all project managers of a flavor.
(42:54):
We like the kind that are moreservice based than the kind that
are top down program control types.
But
Every great product model companyI know has project managers.
It's nothing wrong with that.
The key is they're notthe product manager.
Trisha Price (43:11):
Yeah, yeah.
And the key is they're not justchecking check boxes because
there's a process to say, right.
They deeply understand and are alignedin the outcome you're trying to
drive, and they're a part of the team.
Marty Cagan (43:24):
Yeah,
Trisha Price (43:24):
pretty critical.
Well, Marty, I have one final questionfor you, before we finish up today, and
just coming back to hard calls, we'vetalked about, making hard decisions and
prioritization and empowering your teams.
And we've talked aboutdriving towards an outcome.
(43:45):
But for you, when you're coaching andlooking at some of these great product
teams and the best product teams around,
How do you think about that fine linebetween gut instincts, taste, and
true data-driven decisions that needto be made to support hard calls?
Marty Cagan (44:06):
Yeah, no, it's actually a great topic, which is so I
don't really even believe in thewhole concept of gut decisions.
I think that's just aphrase we use to represent
experience and, and that we, the term anumber of people use, Shreyas Doshi is
(44:27):
the one who finally kind of convincedme to adopt the term product sense.
The reason I didn't use it originallywas because it sounded a lot
like something you're born with.
But you're not born with it.
You, you learn it, you develop it.
So we had talked aboutcoaching a minute ago.
The main goal of coaching is todevelop good product sense in your
(44:47):
product people, good product sense.
They understand the customers, theyunderstand the data, they understand
the business, they understand theconstraints, they understand the industry.
This is product sense.
This is what helps youmake good decisions.
Now, even when you have great productsense, sometimes you're gonna want
enough data that you know this is right.
Yeah, sometimes we even want proof.
(45:08):
Sometimes we just want evidence, but youhave enough product sense to know what
you need for each of those decisions.
Some decisions are minor.
You can reverse.
You can correct a mistake in a few hours.
With a hot fix.
Yeah.
In other decisions, they're like,oh my God, we're gonna be sued.
Right.
Or kids could be harmed or theenvironment could be harmed.
(45:29):
So really bad consequence.
So those are things you'renot gonna take lightly.
Mm-hmm.
So this is the kind of stuff we coachthem on, and this is really product sense.
Yeah.
And I explain.
For a lot of the coaching I do.
That's what I'm doing.
I'm, I'm kind of helping themunderstand what is the right level of
rigor and analysis for this decision.
(45:50):
They need to make the decision,but they need to make sure
they've got the right input.
They also need to understand someof those stakeholders have a vote.
Some of them just have opinions, right?
Some of them, it's not a democracy.
They can say no, andyou can't ship anything.
So you need to understand the differenceand you need to make sure that you
(46:11):
understand their constraints and theirconcerns so that we product is solving for
the customer and solving for the business.
So this is the kind of thingwe're developing in people.
And when you meet a great productperson they typically have great
product sets which they have earned.
Yeah.
And that's, it's not
Trisha Price (46:31):
because they're just smart.
I mean, they might be, and it's notbecause they were born that way.
It's, it's the part you kickedoff today's episode with, which
is learning from the mistakes.
When we made a hard call thatdidn't work well, that backfired.
It's learning from the wins, it'swatching other people who have
(46:51):
coached us and invested in us.
It is something thatwe just earn over time.
and I think for some people itcomes more naturally than others.
And it also probably dependswhere we've had the good fortune.
Of being able to spend time in, werewe empowered and were we able to learn
at the micro level before we wereforced to make the macro decisions too?
Marty Cagan (47:12):
Yeah.
Such a big, like I know, I'm sograteful every day I started as a
product with somebody who was coachingme and he told me his job was within
three months to get me to competence.
And that was a lot ofwork, but it was doable.
I mean, if somebody's there to guide you.
It's amazing how fast you canget to where you need to be.
(47:34):
So, you've gotta put in the work,you've gotta talk to customers,
you gotta spend time with the data.
But this is what product people do.
It's absolutely doable.
What I think is really interestinggoing forward is, that's kind of
what's left with product management.
With gen AI and the tools,the, those other things are,
Trisha Price (47:59):
the busy work is gone.
Marty Cagan (48:00):
Yeah.
Trisha Price (48:01):
Now you've gotta have product sense and make decisions
and be accountable to outcomes.
Marty Cagan (48:05):
That's right.
Trisha Price (48:06):
Now you gotta spend time with customers, right?
That's right.
It's exciting.
It's an exciting time.
I think personally, it's the best timeever to become a product manager if you're
working in the right organization becausea lot of the more operational aspects.
Are gonna be automated or alreadyautomated for us, and now we can spend
(48:26):
our time thinking and driving outcomes.
Exactly.
Well Marty, thank you somuch for joining us today.
I know our listenersappreciate your advice.
A reminder for everybody if youlike what you heard from Marty,
but wanna learn a lot more.
Marty has three great books outthere, that you can read and
(48:47):
learn and get a lot more detail.
Or you can obviously engage with,Silicon Valley Product Group as well.
So thank you, Marty.
Well, thanks for inviting me, Trisha.
I enjoyed the conversation.
Me too.
Thank you for listening to HardCalls, the product podcast, where
we share best practices and allthe things you need to succeed.
If you enjoyed the show today, sharewith your friends and come back for more.
If you build software or lead people who do,
then you're in the right place.
This is hard calls, real decisions,real leaders, real outcomes.
Hi, I'm Trisha Price, and welcome backto Hard Calls where product leaders
come to talk about the business outcomesthey're accountable to and the hard calls
they have had to make to achieve them.
(00:22):
Today's guest is one of themost influential voices in
modern product management.
Marty Cagan partner at theSilicon Valley Product Group.
Marty has spent decades shaping how theworld's best tech companies build product.
He started with executive rolesat eBay, AOL, and Netscape, and
he's continued his work advisingproduct leaders across the globe.
(00:43):
He's the author of three foundationalbooks in the product world.
If you haven't read them, you should.
The First is Inspired, How toCreate Tech Products Customers
Love, the second, Empowered OrdinaryPeople, Extraordinary Products.
And the third, my personal favorite,and one we're gonna talk most
about today, Transformed Movingto the Product Operating Model.
(01:04):
Through Marty's writing, coaching,and speaking, he has helped redefine
the role of product teams movingfrom feature factory to strategic
driver of innovation and growth.
His work is read, taught and referencedby product leaders everywhere.
Marty, welcome to the show.
Thanks very much, Trisha.
Thanks for inviting me.
I'm so excited to have you here, and asyou know this is the Hard Calls Podcast,
(01:28):
and so I like to kick off each one ofthese sessions to just hear from you.
If you look back over your product career,what has one hard call that you've had
to make and what made it so challenging?
Marty Cagan (01:43):
Well, first of all, you probably people who could do the math.
Man, I've had a very long career, I mean,literally 45 years doing tech products.
So a lot of calls and alot of mistakes for sure.
Honestly.
Um I'm guessing what you're really lookingfor is hard calls that you kind of regret.
(02:05):
The hard calls that wentwell make you look smart.
But hard calls that don't gowell are humbling for sure.
And honestly, they're the onesthat really stick in my head.
The other thing I'd probably admitis the first half of my career was
as an operator really running productorganizations and, the calls for that
(02:26):
are a lot harder than the second halfof my career, which was is as an advisor
and coach where I give my opinion,but really it's whatever the person
wants to do and I try to support 'em.
That's much easier.
So the calls I do, you could say, well, Imake some hard calls on what to call the
(02:46):
product operating model in a new book.
But really it doesn't matterthat much in the world whether
or not you get that right.
I would, I mean, we all have scars.
I have scars that my last realjob was running product at eBay.
And at the time we were actuallytwice as big as Amazon, so it was a
(03:08):
very major property for the internet.
And I remember that one of the,and the good news is it was young
and it was growing and there wasopportunities everywhere and we
did a lot of very good things.
But there was one big product called,that I remember, that I personally made.
It was a huge mistake and Ireally learned a very hard lesson.
(03:29):
I don't know how much I could spend anhour telling you about how, what made
it hard and stuff, but fundamentally,we had just acquired PayPal.
And, the hardest part for people onearly eBay was just paying for something.
They were literally sendingchecks through the mail.
I mean, a lot of people were born afterwhat I'm describing, so it was a long
(03:50):
time ago, but it was, this idea ofintegrating a real payment solution.
There was some crummy onesbefore, but this was good.
Was something that we were reallyexcited about and it was one of
those rare eBay's, a marketplace.
So there's buyers, sellers, and then eBay.
It was one of the rare win win-wins.
Buyers wanted it.
(04:11):
Sellers wanted it.
We wanted it.
It was just a great win, and we testedthe hell out of it because this was a big
change to the workflow to list something,a big change to buy something we did.
We tested the hell out of it.
We did all the practicesthat, you try to advocate.
Because of other mistakes earlier youlearn that are really important to do.
(04:33):
And we did it.
And I remember, 'cause we got inthis, right before we launched,
we had a, we all sat down withthe CEO and said, are we ready?
And I'm like, we're ready.
This is gonna be, this is,we're, we're so excited.
The community knows about it.
They're excited about it.
The people that tried it loved it.
Anyway, we launched it.
It was a disaster.
(04:54):
And it was a disaster.
It's one of those things, whenever youlaunch something big, you're kind of
looking at the data because it's normalthat there's a little bit of a dip because
it's basically people are learning how itnow works and then that's normal, but you
expect it to go up again and get better.
And it wasn't.
And I'm like, finally, oh my God.
I know, I know what happened.
(05:15):
We screwed up.
I screwed up.
and, and this was a lessonthat I've got so many scars.
I share this with so many companieseven today, that it's not enough
that people love your product.
It's not enough.
They also have to be able to digest it.
And what was going on was, even thoughthese buyers and sellers were screaming
(05:39):
for this solution, that doesn't mean theywere screaming to change how they work.
And, I remembered that veryearly when I met the co-founder
of eBay, Pierre Omidyar.
He had warned me about this.
I don't even know, I actually haven't toldthis story in probably more than a decade.
(06:01):
I'll tell you the story just 'causeit's hilarious, but feel free to edit
it out if you go because it's very old.
But I thought this boy, I shouldhave listened to him harder on this.
He was explaining to me that,'cause I had only done products
for developers before eBay.
So I was a platform guy, developerplatform, and I love developer
(06:22):
tools and eBay's this weirdmarketplace with all these crazy
buyers and lots of crazy sellers.
Just very different personalities.
Very fun, but very different.
He was trying to explain to me,they're not like developers.
They're like, they're very,they view it as their website.
They view it as their solution,and and we are just the custodians.
Trisha Price (06:44):
Mm-hmm.
Marty Cagan (06:45):
And he was telling me right, in the earliest days, he
had no idea it was gonna take off.
Like this, but, he just whipped together.
He was a front end developer.
He whipped together this websitethat just looked hideous.
You can find out on the way back machinejust how hideous eBay used to look.
It was really, really ugly.
(07:05):
Probably one of the ugliest sites ever.
But it worked, right?
So it was taking off and, hewas surprised because, news.
Crew.
Actually, the San Jose MercuryNews, for those of you that know,
your internet history, they werelike the regional newspaper.
They said, this is, we'dlike to interview you.
And, and, and they took a pictureof the screen and he was embarrassed
(07:27):
because now he sees on a newspaperthis hideous screen, so he says, oh
my gosh, we just have to fix this.
And like, like they hired theirfirst designer and they just.
All he actually did waschange the visual design.
They literally just changed the color.
Uh and because they had this hideousbackground, yellow background,
(07:49):
it was just, you don't do that.
Right?
And, and anyway, he, all theydid was change the color and
they had their first online
riot.
They literally the the buyersand sellers made petitions online
to get eBay to change it back.
And he was like, I, I'm nottrying to pick this fight.
This this, and so we just said whatever.
(08:11):
And they rolled it back.
They rolled the whole thing back andhe, but he was still very embarrassed.
And, the comp, the company kept growingand then a TV station wanted to interview
him and he said, well, this is, Ijust can't go public like this again.
But he said this time he was smarter.
(08:32):
This time, what he did isover the next two weeks.
Every two days, they rolled out aslightly lighter shade of yellow.
Wow.
And in two weeks it was gone.
There were no yellow andnobody said anything.
And he was trying.
And I laughed, I thought it was funny.
But he was trying to con explainto me that change for a community
(08:55):
like this is really, really hard.
And I, I learned what he was really tryingto explain to me when I made that mistake.
Yeah, on the payment stuff.
But it's true.
And Facebook has made this mistake.
Twitter made this mistakea lot of people do.
It's it's a hard lesson to learn.
But anyway, when you do it thislong, you acculate lots of lessons.
(09:18):
Of course, learned like this.
Trisha Price (09:19):
I mean, Marty, that story is still so true for all of us today.
I'm sure.
Very true for the companiesyou advise and help.
Change management's hard and if we'rein the business of not shipping features
and celebrating, but getting outcomes,thinking about how people can consume what
we're changing and putting out there is,is a super important part of what we do.
(09:42):
So that's still super relevant.
And, and so with that, Marty, oneof the things I'm really excited to
learn from you about today and talk toyou about today is operating models,
frameworks, and you and I both knowwe, we see product leaders, product
teams all across the world, and almostall of them, not all of them, but
(10:05):
almost all of them have some sort of anoperating model, a cadence, a framework.
But a lot of times it's stillfalling short in terms of driving
the outcomes that they're tryingto achieve and accountable to.
So, Marty maybe you could justkick us off with why that is.
What are most people getting wrong?
Because I know you seeing this timeand time again was very influential
(10:28):
for your most recent book.
Marty Cagan (10:30):
Yeah.
Well, I mean obviously everybody workssome way, and, that way, they often
will call their framework or theirSDLC or their, their operating model.
So, but if you look closelyat most how most of them work,
(10:52):
it's all around projects.
It's all around featuresand projects in particular.
It's not around outcomes.
Now sort of easy to understandwhy it's not around outcomes
'cause outcomes is hard.
Outcomes is super hard.
What it's about, and honestly,even when they don't acknowledge
(11:12):
this, it's about predictability.
They're trying to optimize forpredictability, so they wanna predict
how much money they're gonna make.
They wanna predict whenthings are gonna happen.
These are, and these are notcrazy things to wanna know.
Trisha Price (11:25):
when you're running a business those are important things.
Marty Cagan (11:26):
Those are, they're running a business and so they're
reasonable things to wanna know.
the, part that gets so many companiesis they don't realize that these are
things they can't know at that stage.
So that's a different issue.
But they, they set up theirwhole way of working around this.
Though we, we call that the project model.
(11:48):
So you fund projects, you staff projects,you build projects, you ship projects.
That's waterfall basicallyis all around that.
The whole, the whole formal lifecycles,software development lifecycle, product
lifecycle, stage gate, phase gate.
These are all just namesfor the same basic thing.
(12:10):
You staff a project, you figure outrequirements, you design the solution, you
build the solution, you test the solution,and finally you ship the solution.
Right?
Then you
Trisha Price (12:20):
have a big party, right, Marty?
Yeah.
Then you have a release
Marty Cagan (12:22):
party and you, you kind of feel like you need it by
then and, but unfortunately you'vesort of given up by then on outcome.
Because you've had to make realtrade-offs on what you're gonna do.
And so, and of course when the companydecided to do it, they only funded
it for a certain amount of time.
And there's all these, there.
(12:43):
The, the consequences of theproject model are so well known
because we've seen it for 40 years.
So it is really well known.
So many people all write an article thattalks about it and they're like, how did
that's what's going on in our company?
Are you listening?
No.
It's like, this is whatso many companies do.
However, if is not all thecompanies, many companies figured
(13:06):
this out many years ago that that,that's actually all about output.
And what matters supposedly is outcomes.
And what would we do differently ifwe're trying to optimize for outcomes?
Well, okay, that's a very different thing.
Just shipping and not achievingan outcome is an empty victory.
And the irony is, the teams that actuallyship for outcomes develop for outcomes are
(13:31):
much more likely to predict an accuratedate than those that are doing projects.
So it's, it's counterintuitive, butanyway, that's, that's the case.
And so what we have been.
I mean, honestly, Silicon ValleyProduct Group, I started it almost
25 years ago, and it was just aboutsharing these techniques I would see
(13:51):
in the best companies because I was,lucky enough to work at some really
good companies that had worked thisway, and yet then I started visiting.
Because I was told you I wasdoing tools for developers.
Yeah.
I started visiting customers.
Yeah.
Early on I'm like, oh my God,how come you work this way?
(14:12):
It's crazy.
Where did this come from?
And they're like, what do you mean?
This is how everybody works in the Midwestand the East and Europe and I'm like
Wow, that does not look good.
And you're, you're nothappy with the results.
You don't seem to even like your jobsand your customers are not happy.
Why do you keep doing it this way?
And it's like, well, thisis how we've always done it.
(14:32):
This is what our leaders know.
And again, there's a realdesire for that predictability.
So what, what the latest book is allabout is just sharing the, the techniques
that we see used in the best companies.
Trisha Price (14:48):
And when people are starting to move from this project model to a
product model, what do you think thehardest hurdles for them to get over?
Is it the trust, the the giving upcontrol and empowering their teams?
You know what is it that is like the thingthat just catches everybody every time?
Marty Cagan (15:13):
A lot of things.
So everything you mentioned for sure,but more, so there's a lot of things.
In fact, the way I've really startedframing it as very much like a product.
What does it take for aproduct to be successful?
Mm-hmm.
A lot of things have to be doneright For a product to be successful.
It's gotta have a gooddesign, it's good experience.
Of course, it's gottabe technically feasible.
(15:34):
It's gotta provide real value.
It's gotta have a lot of things right.
And all it takes is really oneof those to go significantly
wrong and you've got a failed
product just like you'llhave a failed transformation.
So there are a lot of thingsyou've gotta get right.
The hardest things for, I'd say formost of those companies to get right.
(15:54):
Probably starting right at the top.
So many people want to think ofeverything we're talking about as
just a tech thing, an IT thing,but it's not, it's a company thing.
Trisha Price (16:04):
Yeah.
Marty Cagan (16:05):
And so because it's a company thing, it impacts finance,
sales, marketing, services, legal,fine, compliance, all of these.
And so all that means ifthe CEO is not on board.
Most of those people aregonna be, passive aggressive.
They'll just wait, they won't do anythingor they'll get in the way literally.
(16:27):
So the CEO really has to have, they don'thave to be experienced in it, but they
do have to understand what's going on andstep in and show some leadership at times.
Mm-hmm.
And so that's a key one.
Another key one is, and it's oneof those things when I look back
over the years, I kind of regret.
(16:48):
Never tackling the problem of the name,title, product manager because the title
product manager means so many differentthings to so many different people.
Mostly because they're describingthe project model companies.
Or even worse, 'cause there iseven worse, when you talk product
owners, there's even worse.
(17:10):
Out there.
So I always like, I don'twanna fight that battle.
I don't care what it's called.
Let's just call it a product manager.
It's fine.
It's just a different job definition.
But the job definition is so differentfor the product manager on an empowered
team in the product model than aproject team or a feature team that
(17:32):
that's one that constantly get wrong.
They get wrong because HRjust wants to retitle people.
It's so much easier to justretitle people, but it is
much harder to upskill them.
And these are very different skills.
At its essence.
A feature team product manager is muchmore project manager, which is important
(17:54):
of course, but it's not this job.
Trisha Price (17:57):
Same, it's, it's funny you say that, Marty, because of my role at
Pendo, I get to also go in and talk toproduct teams all over and, I was with
a very large company last year, and theyliterally took their entire workforce and
took everyone who had a title of businessanalyst and titled them Product Managers.
(18:22):
Yeah, that was it.
Classic.
They didn't train them, theydidn't see who had the right
backgrounds and skillset sets.
They didn't say, here'sthe difference in the job.
They just said.
Business analyst, not even productowner, not even project manager,
business analyst to product manager.
Marty Cagan (18:36):
Yeah.
So I see that it's a classic one.
It's a classic one.
And that's the, that's the,that's a big problem, obviously.
Another big problem is theway they treat engineers.
Mm-hmm.
So many of them treat 'em as
outsourceable people.
Mm-hmm.
And they literally are outsourcedin a lot of these big companies.
(18:56):
And we have to explain to them,no, in the product model, your
engineers are front and center.
In fact, they're the, they'rethe best source of innovation.
If you care about outcomes, they needto be the ones coming up with the
things that go on the roadmap, notyour stakeholders, not your customers.
It's a, again, a very different model,which is sort of what we're really
(19:17):
describing now is probably the hardestthing for most of these companies is
it's essentially a cultural change.
So we are talking about things aroundculture, about who makes decisions,
how do they make decisions, howdo they make progress, where do
ideas come from, that's different.
And so, I've never been surprisedat why it's so hard to transform.
(19:43):
Because, I mean, these are big changes.
These are not, they're big changes.
Changes, but, but the good news is thereare companies that manage to do it.
Trisha Price (19:52):
Yeah,
there
are.
And do it well.
And you're talking about you, you weretalking about the change and a lot of the
change you were talking about is sort ofin the ideation and prioritization phase,
which is obviously wildly different whenyou're prioritizing and empowered in
support of a goal versus being told togo ship something and now you're breaking
(20:15):
the problem down and trying to ship it.
But I equally see the problem interms of change on the backend.
And what I mean on the backendis iterating, launching,
constantly tweaking,experimenting, figuring out
what's working and not working.
(20:36):
And one of the problems I see isthey have an idea, companies teams
have an idea of the big goal, right?
Like, I want to get revenuein this new product, right?
But like, how do I break that down intosomething manageable and achievable
(20:58):
this quarter, this month, and thenprioritize against it is something I
just see people sort of get frozen in.
Marty Cagan (21:07):
Do you see that, Marty?
Yeah.
Well, to continue from your last questionon all the things that have to be done
right, a whole other big question ishow do you decide what to work on?
Yeah.
And that's, that's usuallyframed as prioritization when
you get down into the teams.
But at the higher level, how doyou decide what to invest in?
(21:31):
How do you decide what you're gonna do?
And, most companies in theproject model are used to doing
that with their stakeholders.
And they kind of all sort of make a bunchof proposals for how much money they
think things would get and all this stuff.
The spreadsheet,
Trisha Price (21:48):
the best Marty, like the weighted spreadsheet,
that's like the death.
When I see that, I'm like, no.
Oh no, you don't have avoting weighted spreadsheet.
Yeah, please no.
Marty Cagan (21:59):
So that's what so many do in one form or another.
I can't tell you how many I've seen.
Now, of course, if you're in the,if you're using the product model.
That's a very different way of working.
Your job, of course, is, for theproduct leaders, is to make sure
you're pursuing the most importantopportunities and responding to the most
(22:19):
serious threats, but more generally,instead of top down, roadmaps.
Instead of that, what we're trying todo is in two big things, product vision.
Which is, how are you going?
Product vision is not aboutyou, it's about your customers.
(22:40):
How is it gonna make you thelives of your customers better?
Because if you don't manage to dothat, you're not gonna sell anything.
You're not gonna, so everything,there are no outcomes.
That's right.
You derives from the product vision.
And most companies, of course, don'tdo product vision, so it's only.
In my experience, it's really onlythe companies that are trying to
do the product model that actuallydo a serious product vision.
(23:02):
If a team company tells you, we do avision for every team, it's like they
don't even know what a vision is.
Right.
That doesn't even make any sense.
So a great product agent, atleast they probably have a feature
roadmap for each one of their teams.
Absolutely.
They do.
Right?
So when they do a real product vision,that's a, for our organization,
maybe even for our entire company,this is what we're trying to do.
(23:23):
It's gonna take somewhere betweenfive, 10 years to do this product
vision, but that tells us how we'regonna make our customers lives better.
That's the first part, theproduct leaders have to do.
The second part then is you can't justgo away for five years and do this.
I wish.
We wish we could, but we can't.
We have to actually pay the bills alongthe way, and that's the product strategy.
(23:49):
The product strategy says, okay,we've got probably only order of
five to seven years, it's gonna takeus to make this vision a reality.
We've got 20 quartersbetween now and then.
Now we've gotta figure out whatproblems do we solve each quarter.
Mm-hmm.
And what we're trying to do there,like I said, is pay the bills
(24:12):
and get us closer to the vision.
The product leaders need toprioritize those critical
problems to solve this quarter.
That is prioritization.
Once they've done that, now theyhave a set of problems to solve and
a set of teams that are equipped tosolve them, and that's what they do.
They assign the problems tosolve to the product teams.
(24:33):
They discover a solution worthbuilding and deliver that solution.
It's not complicated or anything,but it's very different.
The product model from how, thespreadsheets we were talking
about, it's very different.
And most importantly, itrequires product leaders that are
skilled in vision and strategy.
This is referred to as the strategiccontext, like Netflix likes to say,
(24:56):
lead with context, not with control.
Because command and control down, this
Trisha Price (25:02):
is truly the opposite of command and control and requires a
level of trust with your team that mostpeople are pretty uncomfortable with.
Yeah.
Marty Cagan (25:13):
think you talk about that.
Yeah.
Yeah, we do.
Because that's really, if youhad to pick a single theme
undercurrent for the whole successfultransformation is probably trust.
Because, and I don't mean trust,like somebody gets a blank check.
No.
It does mean that there's, instead ofthe leaders making all the decisions,
(25:35):
even the ones that are really notin a good position to make, like
enabling technology and the whatthis customer needs right here.
They are making strategic decisions aboutthe most important problems to solve, but
then the teams are making the decisionson the best way to solve those problems.
Trisha Price (25:54):
Yeah.
Marty Cagan (25:55):
And that though is still a, significant degree of trust.
And one of the mistakes that a lotof companies make when they try
to transform is that they thinksomehow a CEO of a billion or
very, large company is just gonna
Give them that trust works.
It doesn't work that way.
(26:16):
And it, in fairness, itshouldn't work that way.
Shouldn't I agree?
What if that company just renamedall their business analysts to
product managers, they're gonna fail.
Any CEO that just trust them is, isgetting what they deserve, right?
Yeah.
So, no, we have to earn that trust.
And so the way we often frame atransformation is it's all about winning
(26:37):
the hearts and minds of the leadersof the company and the way we do that.
Is safe, small, low cost, lowrisk experiments, which it's
really using the product modelto move to the product model.
Mm-hmm.
In other words, don't make a big projectto move to the product model where you
have, you plan out a year of all thistraining and all this nonsense, instead
(27:03):
we pick a pilot team.
It's basically like an MVP Yeah.
Of what this is gonna look like,and that pilot team is meant to
show your organization and yourleaders what good can look like.
Trisha Price (27:19):
You pick an outcome for them.
Yes.
And then you start doingmodern product discovery.
Yes.
Then you show them
Marty Cagan (27:27):
experimenting.
Yeah.
Now once they see it works, especially acouple times, it's a different situation.
Now for, lots of more teams want to move.
It's that whole technology adoption curve.
We're working through that andthe company starts to feel like we
should apply this to different areas.
(27:47):
This is a good thing,but they know what it is.
And by the way, they also, at thatpoint, they know you can't just
retitle a business analyst becausethey seem what good looks like.
Yeah.
So that's why it's so important to dothese small, low cost, low risk pilot,
show the company what success looks like.
(28:09):
You are earning trusteach time you do that.
Trisha Price (28:13):
So Marty, it sounds like, just the way we were talking
about, you can't set a vision andwait five years to deliver when you're
working with these companies that aremoving to the product operating model.
They can't wait five yearsto show progress and deliver
against that model either.
So tell me like, how, how long does ittake for these companies to transform?
(28:36):
How long does it take for themto quickly start seeing wins
and, and start building moment
Marty Cagan (28:42):
Good.
Well, there's two parts to that.
Two answers to that . The first oneis, how long does it take an entire
business unit to change, for example.
And the honest answer to that istypically one to two years for a
business unit, and which means it's oneto three years or so for a whole big
enterprise with multiple business units.
(29:03):
However, the real question is howlong does it take to see results?
Because for the trust point,that's the real question.
And that's usually a quarter, maybetwo, because that's why what we do is
if you try to change a whole company,like I said, it's gonna be years.
Nobody's gonna give you that blank check.
(29:23):
If you try to say, let's pick one productteam in this business unit, that you've
said is very important, let's give thema problem to solve that you believe you
couldn't have solved this before, butis something that really is meaningful.
And let's set them up theway we, best companies have
(29:44):
sort of shown that you need.
In other words where you don't havethese competencies, you're gonna get
these competencies, you're gonna coachthese people, you're gonna show them
how good team works, and then let's runthat for a, a few weeks, few months.
Yeah.
Trisha Price (29:59):
When, you talk about measures of success or outcomes, one
thing I see people get tripped up on,on moving to this like, Hey, let's
just try something and experiment is
what's the measure?
Is it revenue?
And if they're in a sales ledcompany or a company, even with a
(30:23):
sales, large sales organization.
How can I be accountable to revenue?
because I'm not the oneselling the product.
So maybe give us a little bit of youropinion on is revenue the right metric?
Does it depend on the company?
And if it's not revenue, what areother good outcomes that product
teams can begin to set as theirnorth star and experiment to achieve?
Marty Cagan (30:48):
It's kind of a tricky one because, the higher order point is that
it's not always revenue, that that is theright thing, but it is a business result.
That's the higher orderpoint a business result.
I'll give you some real examples ina minute so this is not ambiguous.
However, sometimes it is revenue.
Yeah.
(31:08):
And, and that, and sometimesit should be revenue.
I'll give you an example ofthat in a minute too, where
it's like that is the business.
So, that's the resulteverybody cares about.
So whenever you 'cause that sameobjection, you hear that all the time,
it's like, well, we don't control.
First of all, nobody controlseverything except the CEO, right?
(31:29):
Right.
Nobody controls everything.
So if you, unless you're willing to just.
Push all the decisions to the CEO.. Yeah.
You're gonna have I say the same.
Trisha Price (31:37):
How do you think the revenue team feels?
Yeah.
When they get a crappy product andthey still have to make their quota.
Marty Cagan (31:41):
Well, well I explained because a lot of these product teams don't
even know that salespeople are commissionbased and they are like, they're
completely dependent on their paycheckgoes whether that product is any good.
Yeah.
It's like how would you liketo sign up for a quota when you
can't even control the product?
Right.
So.
And I was taught, I mean, this is one ofthe very first things I was taught, and
(32:05):
this is why management by Objectives OKRs,are so powerful, is I was taught, look,
a lot of times revenue is the issue and,the biggest driver on that is the product.
So if the product is not selling,don't you think we need the product
manager to get their ass out ofthe building and go sit with sales
(32:26):
and figure out why they can't sell?
I mean, like that's what I wasliterally, I was, it was more
colorful language than that.
That was explained to me.
But I was like, and I'm like,you can't say it's not, you
don't control the sales people.
You don't control finance.
You don't control marketing,but you control the biggest
single factor of the product.
And the whole idea of across-functional team is we should
(32:47):
go figure out what it takes.
Who else is gonna do that?
So, so don't run.
I tell people don't run from revenue asa key result if that's the right result.
Just because you don'tcontrol salespeople, that's
like a very lame excuse.
and by the way, I've made so manyfriends and sales because they're,
(33:11):
they love nothing more than aproduct person that understands.
Yeah.
Yes, for sure.
And they also know there's nothingus product team can do more important
than give them happy customers.
It's all about happyreferenceable customers.
So this is not a bad thing.
Now that said, one of the productcoaches that we work with just published
(33:33):
an article, and I was particularlyinterested in this one because it
was a company that we did not doa transformation engagement with.
So most of the successes I can pointto are the ones my partners did
transformation engagements with,because that's why they're my partners.
They're the best in the world at this.
However, the idea is that why can't youjust read a book, like Transformed, and
(33:57):
maybe get the help of a product coachin and do the same kind of success.
The product coach is Gabby Bufrem.
You may have heard her name.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
A terrific coach.
I recommended Gabby to this companybecause she was one of the very
few coaches coaches I knew thatspeaks Spanish and she's in Mexico.
And anyway, so she shows up atthis company in Mexico, it's like,
(34:20):
40,000 employee company, some travelservices company, and same thing,
they had tried to transform for years.
It was a disaster.
They finally, it's like she's, she's like,you have to demonstrate that this works.
Let's pick a product teamand let's show a real result.
They picked a pilot team and in thefirst quarter they showed a 40% increase
(34:41):
in conversion rate for their bookings.
Like, and now for those that don'tknow, that's basically revenue.
That is everything.
That is revenue comes from that.
Yes.
And that's the kind of thing that, yeah.
That's what the business needed to see.
The power center in thatcompany was the head of sales.
No surprise.
It's right.
Yep.
That's what they sellbookings at a resorts.
(35:02):
So, and it wasn't until hesaw that this really worked,
that anything really changed.
So that, and they didthat in a couple months.
Yeah.
So so's amazing.
So that's what we do.
That's, and that's a real result.
Now did her team, did the productteam have control over sales?
No.
But did they go out to theresorts and actually test?
(35:23):
Yes.
That's what they did.
Trisha Price (35:25):
Yeah.
That's amazing.
That's a great story and super helpful.
'cause I hear that a lot from my friendsin product, from customers that I talk to.
It's just, I'm not in control of revenue.
I'm like, well, you kind of are.
If you build a great product.
Marty, earlier when you were talkingabout the transformation from project
(35:48):
to product, you talked about needingat least CEO support because it
is more than just a product andan engineering way of thinking.
This is something personallyI call whole product, which is
instead of thinking about shippingproduct as engineering and product.
(36:10):
It's, does my sales team know how to sell?
It is the skew in my CPQ and, movingto this whole product mentality.
And, and for me, like I remember myearly days of Pendo and I'm, I know
we all have this bad story somewhere.
We've worked.
I came in.
(36:30):
And I looked in Jira and it saidsomething was shipped and I had
seen release notes about it and Iwent into the product, 'cause I use
our product all the time myself.
And when I went in I couldn't findthe feature to play with it and I,
oh well that's because it's fine toflag and we've only rolled it out to
so and so because we haven't actuallytaught sales and support, doesn't
(36:53):
know how to support that feature yet.
So.
It's not done.
And I'm like, well, then it's not done.
And, but then I went to engineeringand they were like, no, it's done.
Look in Jira, it's done.
how much of that.
Is a part of this transformation in yourcoaching and move to outcomes for you?
Marty Cagan (37:12):
Well, partly we just need there, there's the model,
which is really a set of principles,and then there's people executing.
Yeah.
And knowing how to do their job,you're of course class talking,
classic product marketing.
Right.
so, and, and in a world of continuousdeployment, it's normal if things
are tested behind feature flags.
(37:33):
Sure.
And we make sure that's all good rigor.
But like you said, that wasn't done.
Then maybe there was a productmarketing person that said, well,
it's not done because it's not ready.
We're on week two of a three weekrollout, or whatever they might have had.
But if there's no answer to thatquestion, then it's just hanging.
Right.
Yeah.
And, and this is a, a good questionbecause that's really execution.
(37:59):
There is not rocket science here.
I mean, this normallyhappens every single day.
So then there's a question,so who is responsible for this
consistent, reliable execution?
There are two ways companies address this.
One of 'em I think is thebeginning of the end, and the
other is what good companies do.
(38:19):
The first is they say, well,oh, we need a formal process.
So we need a release process.
And so clearly the product marketingperson didn't follow the release
process and if they would'veonly, checked their whatever check
Trisha Price (38:35):
box.
Yeah.
On template four A in the file,
Marty Cagan (38:40):
Then of course the product marketing person said that
this is a different kind of thing.
The template's not forthat, blah, blah, blah.
And, and so processes.
I, unfortunately, it's true that processesin big companies, especially used as a
substitute for thinking, because whatyou did is just common sense, right?
You came in and said, whereis this thing I, I am supposed
(39:01):
to be able to play with it.
It's not here.
What's going on?
All right.
The real, the second approachis how do you ins, how do you
ensure consistent execution?
And this comes from constantweekly coaching of your people.
So, for example, in that scenario,and I've been in exactly your scenario
there, I mean, that's not that unusual.
(39:23):
Everyone,
Trisha Price (39:24):
everyone has at
Marty Cagan (39:25):
Who is in this case, who's the product marketing person?
I probably would've said, no, let metalk to the product manager first.
And I would've said, all right,well, do you consider this done?
Maybe they say yes, but I said,but I can't see it, so let's
agree it's not done right.
So then the question is, all right, so,so why not, let's, let's figure this out.
(39:46):
And then we may realize either the productmanager didn't, do something they should
have, or product marketing shouldn't have.
But the point is, somebodyneeds some coaching here.
And that's what we'redoing one-on-one coaching.
We're helping peopleget better at their job.
And what's special I think aboutproduct is that, it's so tempting
(40:06):
to write up something as a process,but everything we build is different.
The risks are different,the scenarios different.
The data is different, and this isonly becoming more true when you
build a feature on a foundation model.
So this is, even more of the case.
So the point is what we wanna do ishelp people get better at their job.
(40:29):
And there's always areas people canget better and better, and then they of
course become the ones coaching otherpeople on how to be better at their job.
So the real key to scalability that Ibelieve in was taught and is, is coaching.
Trisha Price (40:45):
I love that.
Earlier you mentioned, and I'm, I'mcurious for, for my own purpose too, that
product managers are not project managers,but project managers are still necessary.
Where do you think that fits in, likewhen you talk about good execution?
If you have technically, if youhave all the right accountable
(41:08):
people who have the right coachingand are communicating regularly.
Do you need a project manager?
But in reality, most of theseorganizations that you and I are
talking about are fairly complexand large, and it's not that simple.
And they would spend theirdays chasing things if someone
wasn't there to help them.
So tell me your philosophy on that.
Marty Cagan (41:28):
Yeah, and this is pretty common, what I'm about to say in so many
companies is there is a crossover point.
At most startups honestlydon't need project managers.
They don't if, if you've got lessthan a handful of teams, there
are so few interdependencies, andthe easiest way to see this is
impediments and just dependencies.
(41:50):
But at a certain point it's usuallyaround a half a dozen product teams,
the number of dependencies, the numberof impediments becomes such that
could the engineering manager do it?
Could the product manager do it?
Of course.
But is that their best use of their time?
And are they able, because one modelis - some companies say, well, we
(42:11):
don't wanna hire project managers'cause Agile doesn't like them.
So what we're gonna do is we'regonna, just make our product
managers work 60 hours a week.
So that's one way, but I, that's okay.
I don't actually think, 'cause whathappens even to those project managers
that are willing to work that long isthen they're forced to choose between
urgent and important every day.
(42:32):
And they choose, they can't helpbut choose urgent most of the time.
And that's project management.
And then they don't dothe product management.
So normally I am foranything but a small startup.
I'm a big advocate for project managers.
Now there are program manager typeproject managers, product project
managers and delivery managers.
They're all project managers of a flavor.
(42:54):
We like the kind that are moreservice based than the kind that
are top down program control types.
But
Every great product model companyI know has project managers.
It's nothing wrong with that.
The key is they're notthe product manager.
Trisha Price (43:11):
Yeah, yeah.
And the key is they're not justchecking check boxes because
there's a process to say, right.
They deeply understand and are alignedin the outcome you're trying to
drive, and they're a part of the team.
Marty Cagan (43:24):
Yeah,
Trisha Price (43:24):
pretty critical.
Well, Marty, I have one final questionfor you, before we finish up today, and
just coming back to hard calls, we'vetalked about, making hard decisions and
prioritization and empowering your teams.
And we've talked aboutdriving towards an outcome.
(43:45):
But for you, when you're coaching andlooking at some of these great product
teams and the best product teams around,
How do you think about that fine linebetween gut instincts, taste, and
true data-driven decisions that needto be made to support hard calls?
Marty Cagan (44:06):
Yeah, no, it's actually a great topic, which is so I
don't really even believe in thewhole concept of gut decisions.
I think that's just aphrase we use to represent
experience and, and that we, the term anumber of people use, Shreyas Doshi is
(44:27):
the one who finally kind of convincedme to adopt the term product sense.
The reason I didn't use it originallywas because it sounded a lot
like something you're born with.
But you're not born with it.
You, you learn it, you develop it.
So we had talked aboutcoaching a minute ago.
The main goal of coaching is todevelop good product sense in your
(44:47):
product people, good product sense.
They understand the customers, theyunderstand the data, they understand
the business, they understand theconstraints, they understand the industry.
This is product sense.
This is what helps youmake good decisions.
Now, even when you have great productsense, sometimes you're gonna want
enough data that you know this is right.
Yeah, sometimes we even want proof.
(45:08):
Sometimes we just want evidence, but youhave enough product sense to know what
you need for each of those decisions.
Some decisions are minor.
You can reverse.
You can correct a mistake in a few hours.
With a hot fix.
Yeah.
In other decisions, they're like,oh my God, we're gonna be sued.
Right.
Or kids could be harmed or theenvironment could be harmed.
(45:29):
So really bad consequence.
So those are things you'renot gonna take lightly.
Mm-hmm.
So this is the kind of stuff we coachthem on, and this is really product sense.
Yeah.
And I explain.
For a lot of the coaching I do.
That's what I'm doing.
I'm, I'm kind of helping themunderstand what is the right level of
rigor and analysis for this decision.
(45:50):
They need to make the decision,but they need to make sure
they've got the right input.
They also need to understand someof those stakeholders have a vote.
Some of them just have opinions, right?
Some of them, it's not a democracy.
They can say no, andyou can't ship anything.
So you need to understand the differenceand you need to make sure that you
(46:11):
understand their constraints and theirconcerns so that we product is solving for
the customer and solving for the business.
So this is the kind of thingwe're developing in people.
And when you meet a great productperson they typically have great
product sets which they have earned.
Yeah.
And that's, it's not
Trisha Price (46:31):
because they're just smart.
I mean, they might be, and it's notbecause they were born that way.
It's, it's the part you kickedoff today's episode with, which
is learning from the mistakes.
When we made a hard call thatdidn't work well, that backfired.
It's learning from the wins, it'swatching other people who have
(46:51):
coached us and invested in us.
It is something thatwe just earn over time.
and I think for some people itcomes more naturally than others.
And it also probably dependswhere we've had the good fortune.
Of being able to spend time in, werewe empowered and were we able to learn
at the micro level before we wereforced to make the macro decisions too?
Marty Cagan (47:12):
Yeah.
Such a big, like I know, I'm sograteful every day I started as a
product with somebody who was coachingme and he told me his job was within
three months to get me to competence.
And that was a lot ofwork, but it was doable.
I mean, if somebody's there to guide you.
It's amazing how fast you canget to where you need to be.
(47:34):
So, you've gotta put in the work,you've gotta talk to customers,
you gotta spend time with the data.
But this is what product people do.
It's absolutely doable.
What I think is really interestinggoing forward is, that's kind of
what's left with product management.
With gen AI and the tools,the, those other things are,
Trisha Price (47:59):
the busy work is gone.
Marty Cagan (48:00):
Yeah.
Trisha Price (48:01):
Now you've gotta have product sense and make decisions
and be accountable to outcomes.
Marty Cagan (48:05):
That's right.
Trisha Price (48:06):
Now you gotta spend time with customers, right?
That's right.
It's exciting.
It's an exciting time.
I think personally, it's the best timeever to become a product manager if you're
working in the right organization becausea lot of the more operational aspects.
Are gonna be automated or alreadyautomated for us, and now we can spend
(48:26):
our time thinking and driving outcomes.
Exactly.
Well Marty, thank you somuch for joining us today.
I know our listenersappreciate your advice.
A reminder for everybody if youlike what you heard from Marty,
but wanna learn a lot more.
Marty has three great books outthere, that you can read and
(48:47):
learn and get a lot more detail.
Or you can obviously engage with,Silicon Valley Product Group as well.
So thank you, Marty.
Well, thanks for inviting me, Trisha.
I enjoyed the conversation.
Me too.
Thank you for listening to HardCalls, the product podcast, where
we share best practices and allthe things you need to succeed.
If you enjoyed the show today, sharewith your friends and come back for more.
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