Following on from my initial post (A Brief Theology of Product Management), I was challenged by a friend to expand on this further and turn that initial post into a mini-series.
So here goes, the difficult second album.
Community is built around the table, sharing, talking, laughing.
I’m very grateful to be part of a crazy little church in Milton Keynes called St. Marks. It is led by the brilliant Paul Oxley who regularly graces the airwaves on Radio2's Pause for Thought. His vision for St. Marks is of a different kind of church community. One where we focus on building tables, not temples. One outcome of this is that eating together is a big deal for us. So much so, that we’d rather spend one in four Sundays just having brunch than doing anything else.
It got me to thinking. There’s something to this. Some of the best teams I have worked with had a common trait. They ate (and drank) together regularly.
Scripture is full of communities being built around tables. When people get together, share a meal together it breaks down barriers, reminds us all that we are not “Software Engineer”, “QA”, “Product Manager”. We are people, who have come to build something together. Ideas are formed, trust is established and lives are shared.
…let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak… — James 1:19
We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak — Epictetus
Part of the pastoral aspect of my degree course was the importance of listening far more than speaking. This is a well known lesson, but one that is far harder to practice than it is to preach. It was only when being trained in professional negotiation did I truly understand the value of silence, and making the effort to really listen. In that context you are looking for the unexpected ‘giveaways’ to strengthen your position, but once you start listening, it unlocks a wealth of information.
From watching user interviews, to execs explaining their business constraints, you can glean understanding by making sure you shut up, look closely at the one speaking and really listen. I’ve found people are generally uncomfortable in silence. Become comfortable with it. Silence is your friend. Don’t jump in and speak just to fill the uncomfortable space, let the silence breathe. To those of you who are MBTI ‘E’s, this will be hard, believe me, I am an extreme ‘E’.
Be wise like snakes and gentle like doves. — Matthew 10:16
This was an interesting instruction given by Jesus to those who were learning from him and I think it applies well to the Product Manager. Wisdom is not a fashionable term, it brings a whiff of staleness that doesn’t gel well with Agile’s ‘move fast and break things’ mentality.
However, I believe wisdom within Product comes from doing just that! In the wise words of Jake the Dog, “Sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something”
Look for those people who have been brave enough to try enough to have failed a bunch of times.
If you’ve ever tried to catch a snake you will know that they move unbelievably fast. Once they’ve identified a desired target they move like lightning with a myopic focus towards it. That’s not a bad lesson for Product people. Sometimes the wood gets very dense. You can have so many competing priorities that you seem to be going round in circles. So, pick one, decide what you would call a success and then go do that.
In ‘Creativity Inc.’ Ed Catmull uses the metaphor of a general trying to decide which of two hills to lead their troops into battle on. Without knowing which would be the best hill to choose, the worst thing they could do would be to wait, hoping for better intel, in the mean time, allowing the opposition to fortify their position. The best option would be to chose one, proceed as fast as possible, then change quickly if they made the wrong choice.
The second instruction refers to being gentle like doves. Doves in the biblical context are a rich metaphor, with the best known reference coming from the story of Noah and his Olive tree finding dove. My personal take on this is that in the effort to move fast and build up your wisdom from making mistakes, finding things that didn’t work and generally maintaining momentum, don’t in that process break Wheaton’s Law.
Your team, peers, exec team and others (hopefully) want you to succeed. One of the worst things you could do is to try to succeed at the expence of others. Look for ways to build others up and break walls down. Try and make progress using peaceful methods. Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg refer to this in their book ‘How Google Works’ which, along with ‘ Creativity Inc.’ I have just finished reading. They refer to the concept of ‘knights, naves and divas’. An explanation here would be too long, so I will just refer you to that book, go read it, you will really enjoy it. Trust me.
