How Practicing Product Management as a Craft Enriched My 30-Year Career

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I recently retired from a 33-year career in Silicon Valley, 30 of which were devoted to enterprise software product management. Having successfully led large, mission-critical product innovations, built high performing teams, advised some of the largest and most valuable customers, and mentored a wide range of team members from PMs to engineers to UX professionals, I would consider it a successful career. I never reached the pinnacle of my profession in title, nor did I strike it rich, but I never aimed that high, so I am not disappointed. I’m actually quite content because my definition of success was rather modest from the beginning.

My definition of a successful career is one where: 1) I found purpose in what I was doing, 2) I enjoyed the working hours of my day and looked forward to the next, 3) I made an impact that enriched my employers, my customers, and my colleagues, and 4) I would be able to raise a family, retire early, and be proud of my professional legacy.

I feel fortunate I somehow managed to check all the boxes, and I am now happily retired.

So how did I do it? I was a bit curious myself. I did not have a master plan going in, so I’d have to say it happened somewhat organically. My guess is my success might have had something to do with my passion for learning best practices in my field and applying them at work.

You see, I have always been a bit of a nerd when it came to product management best practices, whether they pertained to product strategy, management and leadership, software development, design thinking, UX design, or even just self-help guides for personal development. My colleagues sometimes poked fun at me for owning both the audiobook and the hardcopy of my favorite strategy books. Little did they know I also kept a journal all these years to capture my favorite best practices, including lessons learned from applying them at work, in case I wanted to teach someday or write a blog. (But that didn’t stop them from joking I should put patches on my elbows.)

Since everything in the tech world has a limited shelf life, now that I’m retired I figured it would be now or never to start my blog, so I proceeded to go through my journal looking for the best-of-the-best, battle-tested best practices that fueled my product management career.

Let’s Get Started, but Where to Start?

Needless to say, my journal gave me a huge head start. It took only 60 minutes to curate dozens of topics from my journal, and I was only scratching the surface.

Blogging is going to be a piece of cake, I told myself.

Well, not so fast. With so many potential topics to write about, where to start? Do I start with something classic and foundational like “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”? Or geek out about product differentiation with “Blue Ocean Strategy”? Or dive in even deeper with some original content of my own, like “With Enterprise Software Platforms All the Rage, What New Skills Will You need as a PM?”

All the ideas scored high on the “practical usefulness” scale, but nothing stood out as an obvious and compelling topic for my inaugural story.

Then a lightbulb went off as I came across the topic “Start with Why” (made popular by Simon Sinek). It prompted me to consider, “Why am I writing this blog? Why would anyone want to read it? Is there a bigger message, a higher purpose, a deeper meaning to what I wanted to share?” If so, then that should be my inaugural story.

All of a sudden the problem became clear — I wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees. Although each journal entry captured an intriguing insight or a helpful best practice, altogether it chronicles the journey of someone on a quest to master their craft.

Looking back, it was this spirit of craftsmanship that brought purpose and sparked joy in my career. It was by practicing my product management profession as a craft, rather than as a job, that allowed me to transcend the daily rat race to “get shit done” and elevate my game by working smarter, not harder.

I had found the inspiration for my first story.

How Practicing Product Management as a Craft Enriched My Career

Armed with 20/20 hindsight, I can see now just how profoundly this “craft mindset” shaped my career. More specifically:

1. Continuous learning became a top priority. PM’s are notoriously busy, and I commonly hear PMs tell me they have books stacking up on their shelves that they bought but could never find time to read. Practicing PM as a craft turned learning into an obsession that could finally compete against my never ending priorities. In the end, you quickly learn this is a false trade-off because the more you know, the better you can prioritize doing the right things and doing things right the first time. Isn’t that the essence of what Product Management is all about?
2. I felt much more in control. Instead of blindly reacting to a situation, I found power in being able to take a step back, assess the situation, and be deliberate in selecting a solution to the problem at hand. You would think this kind of mindfulness is hard to develop, but that wasn’t the case. Once you do it a couple times, the dopamine from feeling like a master of your circumstances is addicting like a drug. Sometimes I would pick the tried-and-true approach for expediency. Other times I would be adventurous and put a newly learned best practice to the test. That is a lot of power to be able to wield in a job where you can often feel powerless under unrelenting constraints like your MVP scope and release deadlines.
3. I was willing to take more risks. There are always risks associated with trying a new approach, not to mention the extra overhead of managing change. Whether it was convincing my team to take three precious days out of our already packed project schedule to do a Design Sprint for the first time, or piloting a new Limited Availability software release process, it took courage and a strong sense of conviction. This is where a craft mindset makes all the difference. If I was just doing a job, I would most certainly just take the safest route. But if I am practicing my craft, my craft would demand I put the best available practices to work, and give me the courage to do so.
4. I developed superpowers, like the ability to see around corners. Best practices may seem common sense to those in the know, but they can seem like superpowers to the uninitiated. As my repertoire of best practices grew, I found myself able to spot issues much earlier than before, along with having matching solutions and even preventative measures handy. One great example relates to the Forming-Norming-Storming-Adjourning lifecycle of teams. The best practice is to recognize that teams must be properly formed, and team members must be given an opportunity to get to know each other, set ground rules and normalize expectations before the team can enter the storming phase and operate effectively as a team. Despite being taught in most management and leadership programs, under extreme time pressure management may be tempted to cheat the system and ask a new team to “bypass the unnecessary formalities and get straight to work”. Whenever I witness this (and I have witnessed this time and time again on projects big and small) I can predict the team will almost certainly fail, and continue to have false starts, until they backtrack and form-and-norm the team properly. Bets, anyone?
5. I became a better leader and mentor. There is a human side to leading and mentoring which is more nature than nurture, but in the tech world knowledge is always an important currency, and I found myself able to offer more to my team and to my mentees as my own repertoire grew over the years. A broader perspective, deeper insights, more problem solving techniques — they all helped me become a better coach because I had more to offer and with more confidence. I found that even some of the human “soft skills” like empathetic listening and motivation can be learned and practiced, so I incorporated them into how I defined my craft. My learning is never done. Next on my list of things to learn is how to be a better coach by offering fewer answers and asking better questions to help my clients come up with their own solutions.

Although my craft mindset developed organically, I am thankful it happened early in my career because, looking back, it is apparent my career success was not due to any specific set of best practices, but due to having a craft mindset.

My Wish for You

Product management is a noble career, where we are improving the world one product (or feature) at a time. But without the right mindset it can be a very challenging and stressful profession that often leads to burn-out.

My transformation happened organically over time, but that was only because no one explicitly showed me the path.

If, like many PM’s, you are feeling boxed in, stuck in a rat race and powerless to affect your circumstances, my wish for you is that you will find the courage to bootstrap yourself out of that rat cage.

In the coming months, I will be writing stories not merely to share best practices from my repertoire, but to whet your appetite and inspire you to build your own repertoire, hone your own craft, make your own art, and proudly put your own stamp on everything you do.

Just a quick caveat…. Your long PM work hours will probably not get any shorter. Your project deadlines will be just as pressing. But hopefully, more of your working hours will be spent in “flow state” as you approach your work with purpose, confidence, and intellectual curiosity.

Wait, Aren’t You Retired? Why are You Still Talking about Work?

When my coworkers asked me what I planned to do in my retirement, and I told them I wanted to try my hand at starting a blog about PM best practices, some of them questioned why I would still want to think about work in my retirement.

Well, here’s the thing. You can retire from a profession, but I’m not sure you can ever retire from your craft. Perhaps the following quote says it best….

“Passion is caring enough about your art that you will do almost anything to give it away, to make it a gift, to change people.”
― Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

No worries if you have not come across this book — it’s on my list of books I will blog about.

Looking forward to seeing you again on one of my future stories!