Product management … what to do when everything looks like it’s falling apart?

In today’s world, it appears as if everyone knows what product management and the definition of the role are, so everyone can tell you what you should do…

You just need to do a quick Google search using some keywords like “product management”, “product discovery”, or even search for books… there are literally thousands of options out there.

Which brings me to the question: if everyone knows what product management is all about, how could you feel like you have too many things on your plate where you are getting to the point of things starting to fall apart?

Well, you are not the only one!

In this article, I will share with you all my personal experience working as a B2B product manager for Feedzai over the last year. (TL;DR don’t expect to find here the single solution to solve our problems. In fact, if that is what you are looking for, I might as well save you some time: you can stop reading this. No need to thank me.)

I am a physics engineer, but apart from some basic investigation for my masters’ thesis, I’ve never “practised physics”. I’ve decided to put my brain at the service of a company, and my goal was always to help every company I worked for to get better, deliver better services and the ultimate goal: to make our customers/partners happy. I would say that is a pretty good key result, or KPI (as you wish to call it). After working for some big companies like Oi (Brazil), Accenture Technology, Ericsson, which have hundreds of thousands of employees, projects worth dozens of millions of dollars and thousands of people involved, I’ve decided to join the bright and booming startup — Feedzai — in my home country, Portugal.

In the beginning, I assumed it would be a smooth transition from my previous roles (consultant, operations manager, senior solutions architect, delivery manager) to the product manager role… Long story short, it was not easy at all.

Bear with me, while I guide you on my quest to find the light at the end of the tunnel…

You can do all the training you want, read all the books, articles, go to conferences… but the harsh truth is that you will never be prepared for the real world. Never. Ever. Sorry for the bad news.

There is no such thing such as a product-manager expert you can rely on to ease your experience. Because it is not about you! It is not about what you know or what you have learnt in your previous jobs.

You might be brilliant, an A+ student, very creative, excellent track record on previous jobs before coming into product management. Now, it seems like none of it counts…

If you take a look at what you have to do now, you might find yourself buried under several frequent demands that you simply cannot deliver in time and with quality. It might be your boss asking you to go to customer A and B to demo or do workshops about your product. Or your sales and pre-sales team screaming about your product total cost of ownership (TCO) in addition to the updated product definition. Marketing demanding for up-to-date GTM materials. The demos team looking to get your unfinished features available to showcase potential customers. Customer Success teams asking for support, guidance, training or help to solve some bug that is blocking any customer go-live (due dated last week) or your development team demanding you to give them a vision and a strategy… And many many more.

All of those requests, of course, are completely reasonable. And yes, it is your responsibility as a product manager to deliver. And, of course, your own conscience is telling you that all of them are very legit requests.

So you start thinking… What should I, as a product manager, do?

Isn’t product discovery one of the most important things I need to focus on? In other words, building your product competitive analysis so that you can stay one step ahead of them, or at least not fall behind. Also, constantly looking for what’s happening in the community, what new technologies arise, new ideas are taking place, trends on customers behaviour or breakthroughs in your space, these are important areas to focus on as well. After all, you must completely dominate the space of your product.

Then, why can’t you do what is expected of you plus all the other daily demands? You can’t. No healthy, balanced and “even keeled” human being can.

That is it! We’ve reached the bottom of the hole. We are stuck in the quicksand and the darkest mud.

So now what resources can you expect to reach to help you? Read more books on product management? More articles?… I’ve told you before, they were no good. If you have all those things on your plate, there will never, ever, be a magic solution for your situation… There is always one option: you can quit. Give up. Yes, that’s probably one way out. Maybe you “don’t have it in you” to be a good product manager. Maybe you are better at doing other stuff… who knows?

Or… You can do what I did and still do. Start facing the facts, it is simply impossible for you to do everything. So, as a good product manager — and this is on every book (spoiler alert) — you need to start prioritizing your tasks.

Quick side note: Remember when I said that there is no such thing as a product manager expert — that is the truth — so don’t take my word for it. I am not an expert, at all. I am just sharing my experience and I hope some of that relates to yours.

The first step seems easy, right? … Wrong! It’s not. Just make a quick exercise and try to prioritise all the examples I’ve given you. They are all MUST HAVE to-dos. In addition, product discovery is what you really want to do as a PM…

So, maybe I am looking at this from the wrong perspective. Maybe it’s not all on me. Maybe those requests will never stop coming (another spoiler… they won’t ever stop). I am lost again. There is no future for me… let’s just quit!

OR… let’s try a different approach. Sometimes people say (several books and articles), being a PM is like being a Product CEO. Does anyone really believe that?!? But there is something valuable I take out of that mud — the word CEO. No… not you! (You are very far from being a CEO, sorry.) The real CEO! Ultimately, he/she is the one that holds in his/her hands your company’s future, and consequently yours and your product’s.

So what is really important, not for you, not for your product, but for your company? You might find out that it’s very far from your daily tasks and concerns… and, more than that, your product at all.

Yes, that is not easy to cope with, but that’s life. Well, your product might just be at the bottom of the list of your company’s priorities. Now, what is the value of this last piece of information? First, it gives you a perspective on everything. Second, it will help you decide what your next step is to get out of the mud.

What should one do next?

If, by this time, you haven’t decided to quit your job, congratulations!

It is you, the one who decides if this stuff continues to drag you down, lower and lower into the mud hole. Do you want to keep feeling the burden piling? Or do you want something different?

It is entirely up to yo. No one else, just you!

My 1st and only advice: start getting used to the full plate of responsibilities and conflicting priorities. Think about it… Are you truly aware of what’s around you? Are you aware of all of the opportunities and possibilities?

By looking at things from another perspective, one might start seeing some beauty in the dark forest. Or even look at the mud as a sandbox to start experimenting and make some mud-cakes. (… wow, what a facebook catchy message to post on one’s mural!!)

Let’s get serious, you really need to start looking at your tasks, not like the product CEO, but from the company’s CEO perspective. How you decide to help your company achieve its goals is completely up to you. But this is not a single person’s choice. You are not alone. You probably have a boss, peers and a team. You can decide to take your product in a completely different direction from all the others and start the disruption. You can make the thought exercise: Is your product aligned with what the company has envisaged?

If your product is not the company’s top priority, I am sorry, but welcome to the other 99% of the PMs that are in the same position as you are right now. What one decides to do depends on how good one is at forecasting their company’s way forward.

If you want to be disruptive, creative and innovative inside your organization, but again, your product is not a top priority for the company, you have to set yourself above the mud and above the forest. Find the place where the light may shine and use it as your playground for all those ideas you have and want to try but they had never seen the light of day. Find your playground!

If you want to be top of your class… hold your horses! Is that really important? You already know you are not able to do everything people and yourself demand of you. So, take a deep breath and decide what your mission and plan are and be ready to constantly adapt it. Actually, you need to be a master at adjusting it on a regular basis. If you can do it, you won’t barely survive, instead, you will thrive!

In summary, what is the message you can take from my article? Or better, what is what I have in mind when I wrote it?

To be a PM is not easy — at all. You will find yourself easily stuck in the muddy dark forest. But you are not alone, actually, the majority of the PM are in the same situation. How one decides to look at one’s own case is what defines one’s success, and ultimately be at peace with that.

Be the light in the dark forest and turn it into a beautiful fairyland with furry animals playing all day long. If only you can feel that you have in you what it takes to guide everyone around you, congratulations!!

As a final note, let me leave you with a quote that sums up my experience and, at the moment, it makes more sense to me than anything else I’ve read about how to be a product manager:

“Sometimes when things fall apart… Well, that’s the big opportunity to change” (Pema Chodron)