The pinnacle of Orthanc

“There stood a tower of marvelous shape. (…) gaping horns, their pinnacles sharp as the points of spears, keen-edged as knives. Between them was a narrow space, and there upon a floor of polished stone, written with strange signs, a man might stand five hundred feet above the plain”

The Pinnacle of Orthanc was the summit of Saruman’s tower. This small platform high above Isengard was accessed by a flight of thousands of stairs, which Saruman would use to reach the top and observe the stars, as well as look into the Palantir.

The tower’s dreadful form, the height, placement in the middle of Isengard and mostly the fact that it was to be occupied only by one, extremely powerful ruler makes it a great analogy to the isolation of those who have power. But there’s even more, that makes this parallel so appealing. Saruman, alone at the pinnacle of Orthanc being the only one to access magical artifact having such unbelievable power, is a resemblance to one ugly product management antipattern.

The exclusive access to knowledge gives the bearer an obvious advantage. Some product leaders tend to isolate the product team and the organization from data and information. It’s not that hard, especially if the company lacks appropriate culture and maturity. Being the only one with access to data gives these leaders a great advantage when it comes to decision making, negotiations, and especially the learning and evaluation processes.

The reason for this misbehaviour is insecurity. Sharing the knowledge to everybody threatens the wizard not being the only one having great ideas. If so, what if somebody questions his superiority?

The data/information here can be many different kinds of knowledge sources, quantitative data analytics being the best example. As we all know, statistics can confirm every hypothesis, if you only have freedom to choose which of them to use. Not giving your team access to the raw data puts you in the position to single handedly build a prism, an additional layer to look through. This prism is built from creators’ hinches, opinions and his own agenda, and consists of preprocessed information, ie. charts and graphs without the source data.

Qualitative data works similarly — if you’re the only one to decide which client’s statement is relevant and which not, you are the only one to draw the conclusions. The same goes with market trends, or, for example some rapidly changing business circumstances within the company. Some product leaders also tend to accumulate internal stakeholders’ input to become the one, all-powerful Frank Underwood of the organization.

It’s pretty frustrating to work with the wizard on top of the tower. He’s always right, and you’re always vulnerable to surprises. You can never catch up, and your decisions are questioned easily. You live in doubt, eventually losing your confidence and knack.

The proper way to manage data and access to it is obviously full democratization of knowledge. Leaders should strive to give everybody in the organization the same, immediate access to knowledge about customers, processes and top-level decisions, mainly because of two reasons.

1. People. Product leaders should understand that the product management profession is one of the most challenging, but also spectacular fields for forging and exhibiting leadership skills. Being a leader means (among many other) to maximize your team’s potential to grow and shine. Therefore, undoubtedly, product leaders should do their best to feed it with whatever is available to improve their work.
2. Product. Establish free flow of all the accessible information. It’s crucial for maximizing the company’s chance to succeed. Product leader’s role is to support what is best for the product and the customer. To do the right thing. It is a way more difficult task than being the smartest wizard in the room.