Why it Pays to Be Wrong: An Interview with Andrea Saez
As Senior Product Marketing Manager at Trint, Andrea Saez is an expert on all things product and growth. Saez was recently named one of the Top 100 Product Marketing Influencers–and with good reason. Her blog on Medium has attracted thousands of readers who appreciate her passion for product thinking and the level of detail she puts into her informative articles.
Welcome to the Collato blog, Andrea! We’re so happy to have you here. Do you mind introducing yourself to our readers, and telling us a little bit about your background? How did you get into product management?
I started out in support. I was well into my support/success career when one day I asked a simple question: “Why?” This led my then-CEO to realize he was spending a ton of money on a project that wasn’t going anywhere, and no one else had dared question him but me (2 weeks into the job!). That same day, after shutting down the project, he turns to me and tells me I am product manager. I had no idea what that even meant! I had to learn on the job *very quickly.*
From then, I went on to work as part of the product team in various roles, from product experience to now product marketing. I have now found the career that I definitely enjoy and love — PMM (product marketing manager). I get to be both strategic next to the product team, do user research, etc, but also be creative with copy and content.
In your article, “What the H*ck Is a Product Manager Anyway,” you touch on good and bad product managers. How would you define the core competencies of a good PM when just starting out?
If you are just starting out as a PM, my advice would be to be aware that you might be wrong — and that is ok. We often treat being wrong as the worst thing that can happen, but that’s not true. Being wrong should be celebrated often, as this gives you the opportunity to learn, grow, and adapt. Being a PM isn’t about “bringing solutions to the table” — it’s about knowing how to identify problems worth solving.
Imposter syndrome, or the feeling of not being suitable enough for a position, is a common pain point in the PM industry. Why do you think imposter syndrome occurs so frequently in product management? And what can PMs do to overcome it?
I think this relates very well to what I just said about being wrong. We are so often told that being wrong is, well, wrong. But being wrong can be right — if anything, we should aim to disprove our hypotheses as much as we can until we can find the closest answer to the truth based on the evidence we are able to gather.
Product is a mix of art and science, and that can be really scary, especially when you’re in an atmosphere that lacks the psychological safety to learn from mistakes. Even more so when the decisions we make impact the business directly. Product is hard, and there’s a lot of pressure that comes from all angles as we try to build great products.
Read the rest of the article here.
Originally published at https://collato.com.
