Product Management Blog

Why Leading a Product Org is Hard...

After doing in product management over the last 20,000+ office hours, I still find there are some things that are extremely difficult to do consistently well as a software product management leader.  

So this post is for all of you hot shot PM's a few years out of b-school who wonder what things might slow down your career progression once you've nailed the fundementals.  (Many of these might be applicable for leaders outside of product management as well.)  

Below are five tough challenges and some color on why I think they're hard.  In the future, I'll probably do some posts on lessons I've learned and potential approaches worth considering for each of these areas.  Feel free to share thoughts and advice in the comments.  I need all the help I can get ;-)

1. Hiring

Everyone knows the most important thing in any business is hiring great people.  Pulling that off is at least 1/2 of my job.  Here are some reasons building out a world-class team is a pain in the butt.

A lot of good people you want to hire to work for you would love to have your job (which is a good thing).  They're usually kicking butt wherever they are, have a long track record, and solid credentials -- which is why you're recruiting them in the first place.  Unfortunately, many of those same A candidates find anything less (working for you versus being you) beneath them even if their current job is less challenging than the one you're offering.  That's not a dig on them, it just makes it hard since you ideally want someone who's ambitious but also fired up to do the job for which you're hiring today.

Unless you're recruiting for the company du jour, the candidates you want may not know about your firm or at least the opportunity you're trying to fill so you may not be interviewing the right people.  Let's face it, there's only a few hot companies in tech each year.  A few years ago it might have been Myspace, Plaxo, and Yahoo.  Then it might have been Google, Facebook, and Zynga. Next year, it will be a whole new crop.  If you're like 99.9% of hiring managers, you're not from one of the two or three "it" companies of the year (of course we all believe we're the next one) so you have to hunt versus gather.

Most people are not a good fit and to make matters worse, the interviewing process is like weather prediction.  It's better than guessing but wrong enough that it can feel like that.  Case interviews, behavioral interviews, reference checks, etc. are most good at evaluating a candidates interviewing and personal marketing skills.  Trying to figure out how someone will actually grow long term in your Company versus talk about performing may be akin to picking stocks -- shades of improvement over random.  To be fair, it's a bit more achievable to pick people who can do the job you're hiring for today, it's the growth ceiling that's harder to forecast. 

Recruiting Product People

Hiring top talent is hard.  Check out this video to see the lengths people will go to attract the interest of great product managers.

 

What makes a Rock Star PM Candidate?

We often talk about looking for rock stars as PM's and recently, my team and I have been talking a bit about what exactly we mean.  Our goal is to put together the best product team in the country and we really mean it so we've mulled over what specifc characteristics do we think help us get there?  (Previously, we used the "we know it when we see it" method but realized this was a bit too cowboy and probably resulted in misalignment of interview loops.)

Below are the qualities we look for and evaluate when interviewing PM candidates.  When I take a step back and look at the list, it's interesting to note that product management skills are only #6!

Curious to hear others' thoughts on this as this is a list in progress.  For those of you looking to land that sweet PM gig, feel free to use this list as a self-assessment tool.  And yes, it's incredibly hard to find any candidates who meet all the criteria so it's more an assessment framework than a checklist (hopefully you make offers to people who have most of it and potential to do all of it with coaching and development).

 

1. Nice, interesting team player

• No jerks, no a-holes, no backstabbers.  We believe in karma and good things happening to good people who work hard, play well with others, and deliver.
• Team player, can lead but can also follow.  Want's to see the TEAM win.
• Good sense of humor. 

2. Eye of the Tiger

• Do they want to win, have something to prove, and have the determination to make history (as opposed to just taking on another product job).
• Do they get fired up when they hear about all that’s broken at MCHX and say to themselves, I want to fix that.  Now.
• Do they get fired up when they hear about all that’s working at MCHX and say they want to be part of that. Now.
• Are interested in doing whatever it takes for Marchex to become a $1B company and realize that helping us reach that goal is the ultimate boost for their career (as opposed to promotions, titles, or org charts).

3. High Intellectual horsepower. 

• Can they understand complex topics in seconds (not minutes).
• Can they zoom in and zoom out multiple times in a single conversation.
• Can they challenge assumptions and offer new ideas based on creativity, inspiration, and market and customer insights?
• Do they have an intuition for focusing on the things that matter and suppressing the  noise?
• Can they learn new tricks, technologies, customers, industries, etc. in weeks not months?

Comparing Product Management Jobs at Startups vs Small Caps vs Big Guys

I was recently meeting with some MBA students and offering some advice on comparing product management opportunities at different sized companies.  Thinking this might make a good ABS post, below is a summary of my sense of the pros and cons and the kinds of people that are best suited for each type of product management job.  It's not really that one type of PM job is always better than another but more a question of where you are in your career and what matters most. 

At a high level, I tend to think folks without a lot of PM experience will do well to clock some time at an incumbent or a emerging incumbent.  On the other hand, folks with experience can really get a lot more career growth and responsibility at a high-growth small cap.  And then, for those who want to max out on passion and thrills, the VC startup is hard to beat.  I'm sure folks will have different opinions on this and the specific ratings; the table below is more a generalized swag than anything else but feel free to post a comment and share your 2 cents :-)

(Click on image to enlarge)

PM Job Comparison Table

 
 



 

Software Product Manager: You're like the CEO...but you're not. How to manage diagonally.

People often say being a great PM means thinking of yourself as the mini-CEO.

While I often give this advice as well, the reality is it's even tougher than it sounds because you usually don't have direct authority of a CEO. This is the part where people will advise you to be a great influencer, lead by example, and build relationships with the the engineers, QA, ops, marketers, etc. Also true, but incomplete.

There's another big challenge which doesn't get talked about enough among PM's.  And that is that there usually is a real CEO/GM/VP who actually owns the P&L and he has formal control over a lot of the people you try to influence.  Like Drago, he can totally make or break you. How do you build a win-win partnership with him?  

When Product Manager's Announce a Release on Facebook

I saw funny some funny fake FB walls featuring folks like Abe Lincoln and got inspired.  

What if PM's launched their products on FB and their team members were FB friends (and were in particularly open and snarky moods)? 

Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did making it.  FWIW, over the years I've been on the receiving end of all of those statements :-)  

In all seriousness, it's helpful to know how some other folks may stereotype PM's so you can better empathize with them. Remember, the buck stops with you but you're nada without _everyone_ feeling as involved, critical, and important as you are (perhaps making you first among equals).  

Decades of Product Wisdom

I'm still half way through but there are tons of nuggets here.  I find the bald dude and the bearded dude to be particularly insightful.  Lots of scar tissue and candor.  So far some favorite tidbits:

• Don't trust what sales tells you, they may point you in the wrong direction.
• B2B Product's goal is not just a great product for customers, it's a product your salesforce can sell and people will buy.
• Personal credibility and trust is critical.
• Be ready to travel and be out there a lot.
• Listen, you're smart but that's only half the battle.
• A product exec's job is simple: make decisions and build a strong organization.
• Great product managers can kill their own product when it makes sense.
• You have to have two personalities: evangelist and reality checker.
• Don't stay in one job too long.
• Talk to customers and listen to them.

 

Elevator Career Limiting Questions Every PM Must Be Able to Answer...Instantly

It's Tuesday morning and you step into the elevator on your way to the office.  

You're sipping your coffee and wondering about a new issue your manager just emailed you about. You're thinking "I thought I talked to Bob about this last week.  I wonder why this is flaring up again.  Could the fix have not worked?  I had a bad feeling about this..."

Just as the elevator doors close and you start reading a new mail that comes in on your phone, your CEO walks in.  You immediately stand a bit taller and give your best "I'm in control" smile and say "Good morning Steve."  You wonder to yourself if he's heard about this issue with your product and he says hello and glances at his phone.  A few seconds later, he looks up and says "Joe, I've been meaning to ask you..."

How NOT to get a job in Product Management

Over the last dozen years, I've interviewed PM's for startups, mega corps, and now a growing small cap. At this point, I've probably interviewed >100 product management candidates. There are any number of reasons people don't get an offer and to be fair, this can easily be applied to any job but here's what I've seen from many unsuccessful PM interviewees.

Be lame.  When you think about the annual compensation for the job you're interviewing for, those 6 or so one hour interviews are worth $10-20K+ each.  If you show up and you've got low energy, low engagement, and look like you're getting a root canal, you'll probably get lost in the shuffle. Moreover, people need to envision you inspiring and leading a core team, don't bring Lame PM to the interview, bring Leader PM.  If you're not fire up, don't waste the day.  If you are gonna go for a loop, bring your A game and emanate positive energy (think about posture, greeting body language, voice projection, active listening, etc.). 

What prior job best prepares you for Product Management?

Just answered an open question on the On Product Management blog so figured I'd paste an expanded version of it below. There's a bunch of comments on Saeed's original post so do check it out.  

Here were my 2 cents on what jobs prepare people well for PM.  In my experience, I’ve seen a variety of PM career paths. The good news is it seems to be one of those where smart people can make it work regardless of their previous jobs.

That said, there are three that come to mind that I think deserve special mention.

(1) The X-engineer.

These guys just have great credibility with the developers and can talk the talk, run a bunch of sql queries, build raw prototypes, and they don’t have the MBA stereotype (though engineers with MBA’s are quite potent PM’s). On the flip side, these folks need to make sure they don’t get type casted as too technical to be strategic.  At Google, the Stanford CS undergrad degree was ubiquitous at PM all hands meetings.