How classical music revealed my true calling as a Product Manager
Yeah, you read that title correctly. Classical music opened my eyes to what I actually should be doing as a Product Manager. Does that sound unexpected? Believe me, I was surprised as well.
But before we talk about the revelation I had, let’s set the stage and talk about how I ended up in my first job as a Product Manager and the struggles I was having.
Back in 2016, I was still working as a Process Engineer and after 4 years graduated as a Chemical Engineer, chemical and physical processes were quite my things, I was used to seeing Petroleum being distilled into Gasoline and other products, or metal being melted and becoming a piece of Engine. IT world was only about my computer not working or when the internet stops.
In August same year, I fell into the world of IT due to a friend (Thank you!!). I had no idea what I was doing, people asked me to write “User Stories” and it sounded like making a novel, and creating intangible things was quite weird… But well, new world and, luckily, plenty of time to learn all about it.
At some point in the same year, I faced one of the greatest TED Talks of my life: “The transformative power of classical music” masterfully done by Benjamin Zander in 2008.
The talk itself is mostly centred on how Classical Music can easily be understood by anyone. It also teaches you why doing meaningful things with passion can easily make eyes shine.
You may be wondering, why does this talk matter so much to me? Let me paint a picture.
After a couple of months of understanding this new realm, I started to figure out what was my reason for existence there, my role and what should I do, but, the roots of my background were indeed too deep in my skin (read more about that in my previous article Product or Project Management? Let’s explain the differences), in a way that just an icebreaker and/or something completely random could undo that.
Here comes the video… I was in my living room bored, with an empty mind, just scrolling between the TED Talks thinking what would be nice to watch and learn something. As a music lover, when I saw “Classic Music”, I decided to give it a chance.
If you haven’t watched it yet, take a quick break from this reading and watch it… Spoilers alert…
Benji (Yep, I watched so many times that I took the liberty to start calling him Benji) starts just throwing in your face that you always have two sides of a coin, and it’s on you how you approach problems, but that is just the beginning.
The main point is about minute 17, when he explaines the insightful experience that he had being a conductor and teaching music for over 20 years, the phrase he says is:
“The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.” — Benjamin Zander
When I heard that phrase it worked like a line that connected all the dots of my recent experience and the studies that I did about this whole new role and world.
As a Product Manager, you indeed create things that are meaningful but you actually don’t build anything, the Engineers and the Designers do that. You are like the bird that flies all over the fences as Benji says, thinking on the vision of your song and it’s your responsibility to bring the team to fly with you.
That day I realised that my mission as a Product Manager was actually to influence other people to be powerful and create powerful things, and together we build even more powerful products.
From that day on, whenever I had to think about a Vision for a Product and I had to pitch that, I started to measure myself with the following metric “How many eyes are shinning after I pitch my product?”, If there is a twinkle in the eye of most of my team and the stakeholders, then mission accomplished.
The similarities between being a Product Manager and a Conductor are way more than just that, but I will not point out every single one, as Maarten Dalmijn already did that in the article “How do Product Owners deliver value without actually building anything?”
Maarten’s article actually raised an important question in my mind: “Is the Product Manager position a must-have in a product team?”, well, the answer is no, as the same as the Conductor is not a must-have in an orchestra.
On the other hand, if you slightly rephrase that question to “To build a product which is valued by the market and viable for the company, is the Product Manager position a must-have in a product team?”, now we start to become important, as scientific studies show that an Orchestra sounds better when guided by a conductor (You can read more here, here and here).
Although I don’t have scientific studies to support that fact for us, Product Managers, that became easy to figure out once working with Product Teams.
But still, Maarten’s Article is so good that it made me think a lot after this quote:
“Good conductors know when to let an orchestra lead itself. Ninety per cent of what a conductor does come in the rehearsal — the vision, the structure, the architecture” — Joshua Bell
I thought for long enough “How can I make myself useless in a Product Team, be there just for the rehearsals?”. And I challenge you to do the same.
As a Product Manager, the rehearsals could be translated to the first steps of your product, making the team understand what is the vision of the product, what is the value being created, and how we will conquer the world by building what we are building, getting the team by the heart, literally swinging everyone’s violin bows to the right direction.
If you are clear in your communication, create a sense of purpose of existence for your product, and get your team by heart connected to that purpose, there is no hard work anymore, everything will flow smoothly, your team will know what and how to do, and if you are lucky, even when to do. And that is what I as a Product Manager pursue every single day.
Being a good conductor is not just understanding the feeling that you want to pass on to the audience, but also figuring out how the orchestra will feel playing the song, how they will react when they bump in an out of tune note, or when someone loses tempo or even when you get lost in your guidance. In the end, you are empowering the Orchestra to conquer the world.
Although it sounds amazing and I said it as an easy thing, don’t underestimate the complexity, as Benji said, your job is to make other people powerful, people are the core of everything, and people are by far the most complex system in the universe, not even the universe itself is as complex as human beings, look to the flat earth people for instance… how can you explain that?!?!
My challenge to you is, “How can you make great songs without playing a note, and being there just for the rehearsals?”. And I challenge not only you Product Managers out there but every single role that “Doesn’t make a sound”.
At the end of the day, all I want it’s to be propped up on a fence seeing the birds flying over it towards the same direction, singing the same song… that means that I definitely have many shining eyes around me!
Thank you Maarten Dalmijn for giving me the push I needed to finish this article!
