How is Product Management Like CrossFit?
CrossFit is a training philosophy to improve physical well-being; it is fitness while interacting in an accepting community environment. Its ultimate aim is to forge elite fitness in everyone, from an Olympic athlete to a soccer mom to a teenager to a grandmother.
CrossFit’s main principles are based on constantly varied, functional, high-intensity movements with the purpose to “IWCABTMD”— Increase Work Capacity over Broad Time and Modal Domains. This means a CrossFitter can run a marathon, dead-lift two times their body weight and do handstand pushups. It’s a wide approach across different physical disciplines of cardio, strength training and even body-weight-based gymnastics. This covers different modalities (disciplines) and different time domains (short to long). A CrossFitter may not run the fastest marathon or squat with the most weight, but, unlike most who specialize in each of those areas, they can make a good showing in each.
All this is performed for a score in time or reps that measures the effect that can be tracked on one’s fitness — namely evidence-based fitness. The additional magic sauce is doing it with community. Suffer together by practicing Nietzsche’s philosophical tenet: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, while every day you get a little better.
So how does CrossFit relate to product management? The most obvious parallel is the constantly varying challenge of driving product offerings across various cross-functional departments to produce results, such as revenue and profit margins, to the delight of the user/customer.
Another similarity is in how both the CrossFitter and the product manager break down big problems into smaller, easier-to-tackle ones. Case in point: Every Memorial Day, CrossFitters participate in a workout called Murph. It is what is known as a “hero” workout. CrossFit has a long tradition of dedicating and naming specially made workouts that honor someone in the military, LEOs (law enforcement officers) or first responders who made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure our freedom or safety. Murph consists of running 1 mile; doing 100 pullups, 200 pushups, 300 squats; and finishing with another 1-mile run.
It’s a big problem with a lot of pain points. The CrossFitter strategizes the partitioning of the volume of moves in a way they know they can do it and succeed. The thinking is: What is going to cause the most pain, and what is going to drive failure — such as hitting muscular failure on the pushups? For some, that may be 10 sets of 10/20/30; for others, 20 sets of 5/10/15; and so on. Both the CrossFitter and the PM think about and understand the problem, then break it down to pieces that can be solved.
Finally, the industry and the work activity run at a very high intensity. Though PMs are not necessarily subject-matter experts, they understand, emphasize, and relate to each department and discipline that relates to the product’s success.
Product managers are not design engineers, NPI specialists, quality hawks — you name it. Nevertheless, they understand each part and its importance to delivering something that meets a market challenge or need that advances our customers forward. Like CrossFitters, product managers work within a community of cross-functional teams to score a technically advanced, competitive product.
The PM’s and CrossFitter’s objective is to create within the community/company a sense of pride by striving to be better than the rest … and in doing so every day, becoming a little better.
