Playing the Long Game As A Product Manager
It’s easy to fall into the short-game trap, instead of thinking about the long game.
With the long game, you’re building products that solve problems for users, and that people will love. The long game has you building loyalty with users who will recommend your product to others.
For the short game, you’re focusing on your metrics, or your numbers for you next quarter. While these aspects are important, they’re easy distractions from the long term vision of your product. Focus too much on these, and you lose focus on the long game.
Warren Buffett has always been one to play the long game.
Warren Buffett’s investment philosophy is summed up in the quote below:
“We select such investments on a long-term basis, weighing the same factors as would be involved in the purchase of 100% of an operating business:
(1) favorable long-term economic characteristics;
(2) competent and honest management;
(3) purchase price attractive when measured against the yardstick of value to a private owner; and
(4) an industry with which we are familiar and whose long-term business characteristics we feel competent to judge.”
When people wonder why Warren was so reluctant to invest in tech, you can look at his rules above to see why.
- Warren has admitted that he’s not that familiar with the tech world.
2. “he (Warren) pointed out that tech companies tend to have limited “moats.” A wide moat refers to a durable competitive advantage that preserves market share and facilitates profitability for years to come — for example, Wal-Mart‘s wide moat is its size and distribution network, which allow it to sell items cheaper than its competition.”
Warren Buffett Won’t Buy These 3 Types of Stocks
Warren has been one to play the long game for investing, and that’s why he’s been so successful.
In the software world, Amazon is the perfect example of a company that has played the long game.
It’s the classic story of the rabbit and the tortoise. The cocky dot-coms of the mid-’90s were — just like jack rabbits — popping up everywhere, with dollar signs in their eyes, making a mad dash for some fast and easy cash, and lots of it. Young entrepreneurs were living the high life, and venture capitalists were ignoring all they were taught, believing the Internet was some sort of magical moneymaker. Amazon, meanwhile, was the proverbial tortoise, with Bezos deciding that a slow and steady pace to profitability would ultimately win the race — much to the dismay of his investors.
“The long-term approach is rare enough that it means you’re not competing against very many companies because most companies want to see a return on investment in, you know, one, two, three years. … I’m willing for it to be five, six, seven years. So just that change in timeline can be a very big competitive advantage,” he (Bezos) said.
eWEEK at 30: How Amazon Survived the Dot-Com Crash to Rule the Cloud
By playing the long game, instead of getting involved in short-term thinking, Amazon has survived and thrived while many others folded.
With the long-game in mind, I want to discuss the “current” tech bubble.
Current is in quotes as it’s still unclear if we’re in one. I think we are. Looking back at the story above on Amazon above:
It’s the classic story of the rabbit and the tortoise. The cocky dot-coms of the mid-’90s were — just like jack rabbits — popping up everywhere, with dollar signs in their eyes, making a mad dash for some fast and easy cash, and lots of it. Young entrepreneurs were living the high life, and venture capitalists were ignoring all they were taught, believing the Internet was some sort of magical moneymaker
It’s easy to see that there are a lot of overlaps in the the d0t coms of the 90s and what is happening now. There’s plenty of trend hopping and companies building products or solutions for the short game and not thinking about the long game.
Some feel the same way, others say there is no bubble, others say we may be in one. Perhaps the bubble will pop up in the next 6 months, next week, two years from now, or it won’t happen. It’s hard to say.
If you’re playing the long game, a bubble won’t matter in the long run.
Sure, you will see a dip when that bubble pops (if it exists), but if you’re focused on the long game, your chance of survival is far greater than company or products that focused on the short game.
Here are some articles I came across in regards to the bubble:
Silicon Valley’s Problem-Solving Bubble
But as the on-demand trend has exploded, the problems addressed by one-touch services have become smaller and smaller — and thus further magnified by the companies solving them.
Minor errands morph into huge obstacles (“No more planning ahead, sitting in traffic, or running to the store,” booze-delivery startup Foxtrot promises). Simple tasks become dreaded time sucks (“So, it looks like you’ll be traveling next week,” begins a video from suitcase-packing service Dufl. “Time to fold the laundry, pick up the dry cleaning, and of, course, pack. There goes your Sunday night”).
But Silicon Valley’s problem inflation is more than a shopworn advertising trope — it’s evidence that entrepreneurs are tackling issues that are really only problems for people much like themselves.
Two more articles:
If we continue to pitch our perk-based products and services as “game-changing solutions to global problems”, we will only demonstrate to the rest of the world how out of touch we are. We will show everyone else outside of The Valley, and outside of innovation hubs more broadly, that we have forgotten how big the world really is. And we will betray those working on projects that truly are ‘game-changing’, providing ‘solutions’ to very real and very troubling problems.
Silicon Valley Has A “Problem” Problem
Right now, entrepreneurs are trying to fix things that aren’t broken. And we can all name a lot of things that are broken: Health care, education, homelessness and poverty, food waste, climate change … need I continue? These aren’t even small market problems.
Now, I’m not saying that your product needs to change the world for billions of people by tackling things such as food waste, poverty, or education (but major props to you if you are). It’s fine to build a product that addresses a problem or pain point for a niche audience. However, it’s when you’re building to solutions that are trendy right now, and not focusing on the long game, that is when you get into trouble.
So, what does this mean for you, the Product Manager? What do you do with the long game?
It’s easy to get caught up in the short game as a Product Manager. You have KPIs to hit for your upcoming quarters. You have many fires that seemingly need to be dealt with now. You need that “killer” feature that will magically make people start using and buying your product.
Now, I’m not saying that you should disregard or ignore the above, but it’s so easy to get swamped down in them that you forget about the long game. You forget about what the company values, what the product should mean for users over the coming years, what changes will happen, and where you’ll be. It’s super easy to ignore things down the road and put 100% of your focus on the here and now.
No, I’m not saying you ignore the short-game. Perhaps the company is in a panic mode and wondering if they’re going to have to lay people off, or if they’ll have enough money to pay employees for the next pay period. You can’t just ignore those when those happen. However, I would argue with focusing more on the long game, you can avoid situations like this.
Conclusion:
Don’t forget about the long game. That long game, those things you had planned a few quarters, or years from now, will eventually arrive one day, and if you haven’t prepared yourself for it, you’ll only find bigger fires to deal with, if they are still around.
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Originally published at www.pmpaul.com on August 24, 2017.
