It feels good to be writing again. I am the first to admit, I have been a complete slacker and just lazy to write lately. I went on sabbatical in early 2015. For those that do know me, YES, I took some time off to hang out with the family, sit by the beach in San Jose del Cabo, sleep until late and just do NOTHING!
The funny and unexpected part about all this is that by the second month I was already going crazy and itching/anxious to get myself busy and involved with a new project again. Six (6) months later I decided to finally get back into it and spend some time with JewelsScent, one of the companies we're involved with through Zerimarventures. I helped out there for six months and then decided it was time for a little overseas adventure.
Currently I live in London, where I work for eMoov, a Zerimarventures company we backed in 2013. I am acting as their CTO, firming up their tech stack and driving their product forward. Yes, product, it just seems that I can't get away from it ;). This is a truly amazing company with a strong team and run by an excellent CEO. Nevertheless, I must admit we have had our good share of challenges with product and tech, which is what prompted me to write this post about what, in my opinion, a product manager is all about.
Early in my career when I was at Ovesrtock.com, the product manager role didn't even exist. As a matter of fact, the culture there was such that any title with the word manager used to be looked at as a bureaucratic burden. However, we did have roles such as business analysts, which, if I need to be honest, I regard as completely useless. I have experienced organizations where a simple project had a project manager, business analyst, product manager, and UX designer, all of them asked to do a simple feature any smart kid out of high school and thealmighty Google can easily coordinate by themselves.
Oh, I almost forgot, this particular lineup I mentioned above didn't even include the director of engineering, the lead engineer and finally the guy that would write the feature. Hahahaha, this is fucken ridiculous, right? I am serious about this! Insane don’t you think?
I talk to a wide variety of entrepreneurs and hungry peeps looking to make a mark on a daily basis. The one thing I constantly hear is that they all feelthe need of a rockstar product manager in their startup, or they want to get involved in a company as a product manager. Why a PM? Is it because someone like Sundar Pichai (Google's new CEO) was once a product manager at Google, and look where he's at now? Is it because it's the "IN" job title to have nowadays? Who knows?!
Personally, I think the reasoning behind all this is because it's one of those jobs that actually don't require you to be an expert at anything. After all, don't they say experts just fuck things up, right?
Here is a list of things I have read in multiple articles where they talk about the product manager role.
You’re a Mini-CEO
You're the boss
You get to lead others
You're the subject matter expert
The products look and feel is on you
You're the most important person in the company
All this sounds great, which most likely influences people to get into the role. But let's face it, it sounds fucken great! The Mini-CEO! Who doesn't like that?!
OK, it’s time for a reality check now! Over the years, I have developed a picture of what a product manager is all about. This picture has come into focus with years of being neck-deep into the role and as a result of working with many useless PMs.
When I started CommerceInterface I focused 100% on the sales and business development, and delegated and/or hired others to handle things like tech and this so called “product role”, until I finally realized things weren't going as well as we thought.
Let me remind you that I ended up in the role out of necessity. Don't they say "necessity is the mother of invention". Yeah, one of these PM's I describe above; was driving the product into the ground. Ultimately, it was my fault, since I was the one letting it happen.
I decided to hand sales and business development to a colleague who was kicking ass in the business and got into this product role. Here is what I managed to learn out of all this and how I would describe a valuable product manager:
Humility: If you don't have this, just go home! You need this in order to listen.
More listening - less talking: Often you will find yourself asking tons of questions, even if they seem dumb and/or obvious, but if you are not able to listen, how will you ever learn and know what your customers really want? Listen, listen, listen!
Passionate about the problem, not the solution: You can get way too caught up in the solution. Problems are easy to spot and we can formulate solutions pretty quickly. Remember to listen and deep-dive into the problem, and worry about addressing the problem later. The solution will come organically.
Loves to help: Believe it or not, some people don't like to help. They like to delegate, give orders and usually hate talking to customers. You really need to love helping customers.
Values the customers point of views: How many times have we sat down to make fun of the customer for bringing up an issue we all feel is stupid? After all, we get it and they don't. Probably it wasn't well designed to start with or we didn't listen enough. If you truly value your customers feedback, they tend to always accept your product with ease.
Realizes there are two types of customers (Internal & External): If you're servicing an external customer, you're likely servicing an internal customer as well. The internal customer (e.g. knowledge frontiers) interact with customers daily, they know the tone customers like, they have the customers pulse, etc. They are also our customers and your best sales agents at the same time. If your internal customers love your product, they will be positive about it to your external customers.
Ability to move fast: I am all for the process approach within a product and tech organization, but don't let this get in the way of moving fast. There will be times you will need to move fast, which means no need of requirement docs, just simple feature descriptions straight into the ticket. it’s vital to make sure you use some sort of change management system (e.g. Jira, Pivotal Tracker, Trello, etc.) so you can keep all the communication on a feature within that system.
Always delivering, even if it's in small bites: Customers love new feature releases. Define natural cut points in a feature and get features out fast and frequently. It will also make you feel like you’re getting shit done. It may not feel like you are since they are small features, but guess what, you're being extremely productive this way.
Attention to detail: There is nothing worse than having a feature that just lacks attention to details. We have all been guilty of saying something like "It's good enough for release, a few small details left, but that can be done later". I hate this line of thinking! if it's a small detail, then why not handle it immediately?! My favorite quote on this is from Jack Dorsey: “Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.”
Loves to tell a story: Your product needs to follow a story line. Support articles and “How to…” videos are all great ways to show customers how to use your product. The best way however, is to simply make them feel enamored through the user journey you take them through. Beware! This is not rocket science. You get people talking all this fancy BS about user journeys and blah blah blah. It's simple, listen, listen and listen and there is your user journey. You don't need a UX designer for this task. You just need to listen, value your customers point of view and be passionate about the problem.
Team player: You will have to make many sacrifices in order to win. Just remember one thing: don't ever ask anyone to do anything you're not willing to do yourself. A true leader leads by example and helps others become successful.
Gets it done with limited resources: Another common thing I hear: "I need more resources if you want me to complete that in addition to the other projects". Please don't fall in that mediocre behavior. Busy people get shit done, and bosses always notice and respect it. If you take something on in addition to other projects and it happens so that you miss delivering it, I guarantee you, they will respect you for taking it on and trying to drive it to completion no matter what.
Makes no excuses: People love excuses. Don't be afraid to say: "I dropped the ball on that and I haven't done it yet". It's quite likely that it slipped because you're doing many valuable things for the organization. Just learn to admit it, pick it up and get it done! Ultimately, “done” gets more respect than any excuse.
Not afraid to make mistakes: If you work with the fear of making a mistake, you're guaranteed to make one. We all make mistakes and I am one that believes we should work to get things approximately right rather than precisely wrong.
I truly hope this helps the reader in understanding the product manager role better. Some may be like "this Ivan guy is oversimplifying this and taking all the glamour out of this", while others will just get it! In reality, it's actually quite simple.
Product management is one of the hardest jobs to define in any organization, partially because it’s different in every company. So, what's worked for me may not necessarily work for you, but I do think the basic principles I describe here are applicable across the board in many different shapes, sizes and colors. Feel free to make use of them as you see fit.
Ultimately, a product is a process of ongoing improvement, which will have many developments and iterations to make it better. Just remember that at the end of the day the best product managers are those that just always find a way to get shit done.