Less Product Managers, More Young Fools

I always hated the term “Product Manager”.

The two words makes me think of a rigid employee pushing paper for the boss and compiling check lists every day.

Was the feature #43 developed in time? Did the designer add the same amount of white space on the top and bottom? How many milliseconds does the main competitor’s homepage takes to load? What are the top 3 complaints of customers with the 2.1.3 release ?

The product manager has the answer somewhere in an Excel file or on one of the whiteboards.

This is the book-keeping part of the job, and sadly many C.E.Os and co-founders get attached to it. There’s something re-assuring about a product manager who is reliable & methodical, like a clock.

I despise this aspect. I wish a startup would create a tool to automatize, keep track and remind teams of objectives. It will have nice visual reporting and would elaborate “what-if” scenarios and contingency planning to make upper management and stakeholders happy.

Book keepers will stale a leading company. Like Canon, the world’s #1 camera and lens maker, sadly content by producing reliable and predictible cameras that checks all the boxes. Yes, your brand new Canon 750D will take very nice portraits and produce enchanting colors. But so did the Canon 450D, five years ago.

Where is the imagination? The dreams of reaching the stars?

We need less book keepers and more young fools. Like Sony product managers. They are passionate by photography, very candid, and almost throw away the industry standards by inventing new mounts and new full-frame cameras. And it’s a great time to switch from Canon to Sony!

Young fools will dream about a something so grandiose it will do something never seen before.

Young fools will have their imagination running about new tools and technologies never tried before. Mix, match, experiment. Even if it’s against social conventions.

Young fools will wake up early or stay in late to try out something new. They work hard when everyone else is sleeping. Like artists, they are obsessed by the vision.

Young fools may not be professional speakers, but they have passion and confidence to inspire people around them.

Young fools will not stop at anything to make their vision come true. Even if sometimes it means stepping on someone’s foot. Come again, sometimes he doesn’t even realize he/she is being hard on someone.

And the young fool’s greatest satisfaction is seeing people benefiting from what he worked on. He takes a step back. The smiles on those faces are priceless and worth all the sleepless nights.

This young fool is the “product manager” you need, perhaps more precious than your 10x developer. He will be the subject expert in an area but still hungry for more. He will be display both naivety and courage.

Look out for the young fools!