My Favorite Product Management Memes
And the kernel of truth behind them
The world is a heavy place right now, I figure a moment of levity might help.
I stumbled upon a bunch of product management memes while preparing for a talk. These memes are funny in their own right, but as with anything of this nature — they are making fun of some real aspects of this job that are worth acknowledging and discussing.
Customer Empathy
Saw a number of memes on this topic (Exhibit A above) — clearly, all of us know the importance of truly understanding the customer problem before we ship a product, testing something with customers perhaps in a lab setting or in a pilot before scaling. BUT — I think cutting corners to meet deadlines is also not unheard of. I think one of the ways to minimize the chance of this happening is to have an always on routine of talking to customers e.g. standing time to talk to customers that almost gets backed into the operating rhythm of the team.
Speaking of perhaps the number one reason why PMs ship products without adequate customer backed thinking:
HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion)
This is a hard one for me to dismiss immediately. Of course — the conventional wisdom is that always building what upper management tells you to build is bad, and that ideas should be bottoms up and coming from those closest to the customer. There is definitely truth in that. However — the “highest paid person” whose opinion these memes seem to be dismissing probably got there by being good at their job and knowing a thing or two about something (e.g. the market, competition, customer needs etc.). I think it makes sense to hear that opinion and factor that into the product development process. Ideally, the team gets to a happy place where the executive’s opinion is treated as one of many inputs into the discovery and definition process.
A number of memes around working with other disciplines.
Kicking things off with my favorite PM meme of all time (courtesy Dan Olsen)
I can spill so much ink on this one. Being the “CEO of the product” would be so much easier — you would have the power to make all the decisions and tell the other functions what to do and what to work on. Unfortunately — this is also a dangerous myth. In most companies — all the people that actually have the skills to build something (design, engineering, data science) don’t report to the product manager. The PM therefore needs to lead with vision, influence, empathy, EQ and collaboration. This is much harder than being the “CEO of the product” — but in my experience, this “marketplace of ideas” often leads to better outcomes.
When working with engineering, there is always some tension around the idea of “tech debt”
I’ve written about this extensively here — the short story is that not all tech debt is bad. Just like debt in real life — sometimes its helpful to take on some tech debt it it helps you test an idea quickly. That said — just like real debt — too much of it is probably not a good thing, and a team should devote a portion of their capacity to the regular paydown of tech debt.
Working with design can be interesting as well — there are stereotypes galore around this
“He’s out to win a design award” — I wish I had a penny for every time I’ve heard this from a frustrated PM (I would have a lot of pennies). I’ve written about how to critique design constructively here — PMs should focus on what customer problem needs to be solved, and how the specific design choice solves that problem and led the designer steer the solution since usually she is the one with the advanced degree in this space.
Managing Stakeholders
Balancing stakeholders needs is a critical part of the PM job and also one of the hardest. Usually — I try to be radically transparent around our prioritization framework (how we’re making decisions about what to work), our roadmap and trade-offs required. Running a transparent process with routines built in to collect feedback and where all stakeholders can come together to align on priorities is also important. Building relationships doesn’t hurt either
On that note — don’t be this guy (below). Be radically transparent. May be hard in the near term — but trust me, always better for long term credibility and building trusting relationships.
Finally, a product manager’s job is hard!
Remember — you are not alone, I love how PM communities are talking about the mental health aspect of things, especially given the last few years.
All views, opinions and statements are my own.
