I had some interesting reactions to my review of Transformed. Some people reached out to say ‘thank you’ for writing it, some quoted and shared (I had my fanboi moments there). Others sidled away from the crazy person.
Generally, I say the response has been positive, and reflects the lived experience for the majority of product people. To be sure, it’s not that I disagree with the ideal Cagan is pushing, only with his preachy tone and the dismissive nature of the language he uses. That, I think is the core of the problem.
Then again, I’m also seeing this kind of response, which prompted this column:
I don’t believe our expectations are too high. The frameworks and ways of working we share are based on our lived experiences, both when we had full-time roles and now what we observe among our coachees and clients.
While the rest of her newsletter is about the benefits of setting high goals as a motivational and aspirational tool over accepting mediocrity, it does remind me on an old joke from USSR days (or the faux democracy of your choice):
Did you hear that Brezhnev got 98% votes in favour in the latest election polls? Then how come I keep meeting the 2%?
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The damage
Now that we’ve had a chuckle, let’s unpack why I think telling everyone to hunt unicorns is damaging.
Again, let me preface this with the fact I admire Wille’s work, I think her books are solid and and useful. I’m all about striving for improvement and doing things better. I’m also happy that at least someone lives in a world where the ideal is an everyday reality.
I just have to wonder, why do I keep meeting only the 2%?
It’s not only me, though, and not just PMs.
just posted about CPO burnout. There is obvious selection bias in the people I meet and speak with, but I do believe that it’s a pervasive problem across the industry. People (generally, not just Product) are burnt out from having to deal with so many things, on so many fronts. Selling them fairy tales — or such highly curated tales about ways of working that do not really exist in a general sense across organisations and time, that they might as well be fairy tales — isn’t helping.In fact, it’s downright damaging. Both to individual practitioners who, when facing their realities, are driven to despair at how this is from the dream, and to the profession as a whole, when the ‘do it right’ is not much more than fantasy that invariably fails to deliver the promise.
We’re exposed to enough ‘Instagam-ification’ (to quote
on ) — we need some better balance and recognition that an ideal to aspire for is a teaching tool, a model, but that reality is far messier and is never going away.One, you must realise that treating “frameworks” as “process” is just as evil. Any time you have a dogmatic playbook which tells you that if you follow it you’ll achieve the same results, you’re destined to fail. Just look at what happened to Scrum, and how these days it’s rigid rather than agile. Same with product management. A framework is a set of principles for you to think and evaluate your situation and context, and find out if it’s helpful or not. What worked for some people in a situation a decade ago, may not be nearly as applicable in the markets you’re playing in today (eg the economics of advertising have changed drastically since Hubspot or Netflix wrote the book — how does that affect your PLG motion vs those who established it 15 years ago when it was cheap and effective?)
Two, even once you found what you think is an area to improve, you may not have enough influence to change it. Telling practitioners that they must fight the good fight at all costs and all times, and that anything less makes them unworthy of the title, isn’t conducive to mental health. Telling CEOs that they have a lot a of useless people they can just get rid of, is telling them what they want to hear and tarnishes the value of people and the profession.
Like I said above, downright damaging.
So what can you do?
My take is:
Showing practitioners ways to improve is great, but shaming them into ‘You’re not a true PMs unless you do it this way’ is just inflammatory. (Leaving aside the True Scotsman logical fallacy).
Teaching ways that organisations need to / could change is great. But teaching them to individual contributor PMs as a sort of promised land, without acknowledging that this is merely the ideal organisational leaders should strive for, is selling snake oil. Preaching to the grass about standing up to the lawnmower isn’t helping the grass.
Cherry-picked use-cases are about as useful as an online MBA from Atlantis: looks great on paper, doesn’t really teach you about the real world. Alongside the “inspirational” material, provide better details about the mess and just effing hard work required would be good to set expectations.
Admit that principles and frameworks are meant to guide conscious evaluation and adaptation, that they have their limitations, and that there is always an element of circumstances and luck that may have changed.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This applies to product management as much as it does to products and services. We know that we are operating in complex environments and domains, are acting as change agents which is notoriously hard, and the world around us is burning (from macro-economics to social disrepair) — and we know our human nature yearns for silver bullets. But giving in to the temptation of those silver bullets is futile and damaging our mental health (ref the Stockdale paradox, if you haven’t come across it yet).
By all means, do read all the books and blogs, listen to the podcasts and lectures, and examine what good could look like. Having a long term vision is important to PMs, as is continual learning of our craft. But be a bit more wary of single viewpoints, of pundits selling things, of promises for panacea — lest it turn out as chasing another unicorn.
When it comes to specific workplaces, the people you work with are far more important that any framework. Find a place with a good culture that you fit in (and it is a matter of personal fit), and that will help you be productive and happy more that any theoretical ways of working.
As a reminder, this blog comes under the caveat that I’m using it to learn. I try to avoid preaching, and the topics I present are an opportunity for me to delve deeper into something that’s on my mind. You learn a bit by reading, more by doing, and a lot by teaching. Forcing myself to properly research a topic, construct a logical article, and write it down clearly, is a great way for me to get a deeper understanding on a topic I need. I hope this is useful to others, a way to come across and examine topics relating to product management, but I’m not trying to convert anyone to The One True Way or sell them any magic hammers.