I recently took a new job as the Head of Product at Alyce. Between the new role and the general realities of a series A startup, many weeks it feels like I’ve been dropped out of an airplane and am learning how to fly before the ground arrives. The Christmas holiday gave me some space to think, “Am I doing it right?” I’m sure I’ll look back at myself next year and rattle off all the things that I’m doing wrong now since “doing it right” is much easier to figure out in hindsight. In my retrospection, I realized that the last time I felt this way was when I first became a product manager and it got me thinking about my team -- two of whom have stepped into the role of “Product Manager” for the first time.
I wondered how I could help them feel better about what they’re doing. Not in a performance review way, but more simply as a weekly self check in, letting them go through their weeks with the self-assuredness that they’re doing it right (or, if not, to self correct it). A former manager of mine, Jeremy Crane, once said that “Your challenge [as a PM] is to add value to the product and our customers. And no one is going to tell you what that means.”
I figured I’d try.
As a PM, you’ll know you’re doing it right when every day you:
Absorb
Build
Communicate
Absorb
Product management is the intersection of what customers want and what the company needs. It can be a delicate balance, but the first important thing is to absorb all of the information about what is happening. Understanding the mission of the company, the desires and frustrations of its customers, the movement of the market and competitors, and the metrics of the product are all good places to start.
Have you absorbed enough? Probably not -- and that should drive some healthy insecurity to learn more. Can you schedule a call with a customer? Sit in on a Sales meeting? Shadow support?
A pitfall here is to spend too much time in comfortable territory. It can be easy to fall back on a couple of these data sources and ignore the rest, for example, if your best friend in the company is in Sales, you’ll hear lots about that area but might ignore the metrics. Conversely, as an introvert, you might find it easier to read articles about competitors instead of talking to customers directly.
You’ll know you’re doing it right when you can mentally check off areas that you’ve learned about in these 4 areas:
Company (including your own product metrics)
Customers
Climate
Competitors
Build
As a product manager, your goal is to ship valuable features, consistently. Even the worst engineering teams ship features, but motivated ones will ship products that are well thought out and have few bugs. This can also drive some healthy insecurity since PMs don’t (and shouldn’t) code. The key to building amazing products isn't to build them yourself, but it is being a good leader -- leading from the front and leading from the back.
Leading from the front is the type of leadership when referenced by Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field” or famous generals’ ability to “lead the platoon into battle.” For a PM, it’s about convincing your team that the feature that they’re about to build is the right feature for the company and its customers. It’s the ability to create excitement and set high expectations for success, sometimes through pure charisma.
Leading from the back is, in the words of HBR, “creating a world to which people want to belong.” In these communities, people are valued for who they are and have the opportunity to contribute to something larger than themselves.” (1) It’s being empathetic to the needs of the team, creating psychological safety, and sometimes acting like a “shit umbrella” from the demands that the rest of the company may have on the engineering team.
A pitfall here is to focus too much on leading from either the front or back. A product manager who is all General MacArthur all the time can fall into the trap of waterfall development -- “I wrote the requirements, they need to implement it.” But conversely, a paternalistic PM will limit the team’s ability to grow and scale.
You know when you’re doing it right when your team critiques in private and celebrates in public.
In private, they’ll have trust that they can bring up concerns and ask silly questions and in public they’ll be proud of the team’s collective success. If one or another isn’t happening, bring in reinforcements. If the private and public are reversed… time to waive a white flag.
Communicate
Communication can be scary because it invites the judgement of the audience. No one wants to be the person doing the demo when the product stops working. Or authoring a spec that is poorly researched. (Or a silly blog post?) Unfortunately the only way to show that a PM is doing a good job of Absorbing information or Building is Communicating.
The good news is that you’ll get about 90% of the way by just doing it. Even a poorly written spec is better than no spec at all. There can be mistakes in communication (and when they happen they can be very painful) but they are most likely found at senior levels of product management. At the associate PM or even PM levels, start by making sure that the story is written down in as many ways you can -- shared google notes, vision docs, press releases, specs, progress emails, release documents and demos.
Communication will help solidify your own absorption of what you’ve absorbed from customers and will help your team build the right features. The more you do it, the easier it gets!
You know when you’re doing it right when you hear your team (and manager) use your examples in their own communications -- for example, if you see slides you created in your manager’s deck, or if your team talks about the customer problem the way you presented it, hooray!
Whew! This turned into a longer blog post than I intended it to. Turns out PM can be hard -- who knew!? If you made it this far, thanks. What do you think is missing that could fill the rest of the 23 letters of the alphabet? And even better, if you’ve got tips for “how do you know if you’re doing it right as a head of product,” I’ll take all of them!
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