Don’t be afraid to throw our your plan and wing it…
Interview with Renee Matsalla, Product & Executive Coach, Co-Founder @ Tacit Edge
In preparing for my interview with Renee Matsalla I put together a list of questions about her journey in product management, companies she had worked with, cultures, failures, and advice she might have to aspiring product Managers.
Renee is an extremely engaging person. I started with a question about what led her to marketing and specifically digital marketing, and the conversation flowed from there. The formal questions were unnecessary to read question by question, but all were answered and a lot more through our hour-long discussion. The ensuing conversation gave me some real and frank insights about the evolution of the role of product management as well as some things to be aware of, both good and bad.
Renee’s career in marketing started right out of school. Knowing she didn’t want to go to a traditional marketing agency, she took a job with Active Conversation, a Calgary based sales software company. Through the evolution of the company, she noted that at first, they were not successful. In trying to provide a general platform that could be used across multiple industries, they found the platform wasn’t truly a fit for any specific industry. They generalized the product out of the market and in trying to meet all needs of all users, they ended up not meeting any group of users needs. In the iteration of the product that Renee was involved in marketing they were able to specialize, rebrand and relaunch the product to become the leading industrial sales software in North America. While they have not become a provider for all industries, they have carved out a niche where they are meeting the needs of a specific set of users.
After working overseas in Berlin on product marketing, Renee relocated back to Calgary and became a Product Manager with Benevity, contributing to some of Benevity’s most successful products. Through this journey she experienced many different iterations of what product management is and how it is done. Seeing a need as well as an opportunity, Renee co-founded Tacit Edge and developed the first Applied Product Management Bootcamp in partnership with SAIT’s School of Digital Technology. I found it interesting that SAIT, being part of Edge Up for the Cyber Security and Data Analytics program, has a separate program with similar goals for Product Management. Through the program they deliver a course that gives you hands-on practical experience working with actual products and developers so students can put into practice what they are learning. It is the first program of its kind in the world and currently sees approximately a 50% employment rate at the conclusion of the program. Many more find employment after completion of the program or find new paths they want to pursue that they became aware of through the program.
Initially, as a Product Manager, Renee hated the role, preferring the marketing side. As a Product Manager she was able to focus on the users, needs, and positions, as opposed to a Project Manager where the focus is more on the deliverables. We also discussed the idea of a Product Owner and agreed that if you do function as a team, everyone has ownership in the product. In a team, the Product Manager’s job is to ensure everyone on the team feels like they own the product.
Renee shared that in Project Management there are still a lot of ‘old school’ rigidity and tactics and inconsistent success metrics. We discussed the idea and, similar to Chapter 10 in LeMay’s Product Management in Practice, how the Agile process has deviated from the original intent. The actions of the Heart of Agile are to collaborate, deliver, reflect, and improve. By trying to stick to a set or rigid process, you are actually working counter to the intent of both the Agile Manifesto and the Heart of Agile. She recommended Inspired as an excellent resource for looking at successful methodologies, but always emphasizes the need to be able to pivot and learn and adapt your process from company to company or project to project. Best Practices need to continually evolve.
When the focus becomes process and delivery over discovery, Product Managers can lose sight of what the goals are. She cautioned against thinking of product features as requirements and in fact hates the word requirements. At the heart of it, you are not meeting requirements, you are solving problems for your users, or desired users.
We spoke a lot about the perceived culture of the digital technology industry. I noted that there has been a large emphasis so far on failing and learning to be comfortable with it as well as a spotlight on how inclusive the industry is. She was quite frank and noted that in some companies in this space there is still intolerance and a punishment culture around failure. She commented that when it comes to failure, as a Product Manager you need to provide “psychological safety” for your team to ensure they feel comfortable pushing themselves and be willing to take risks to succeed. Simon Sinek’s TED talk, How good leaders make you feel safe, talks about how important trust and cooperation is, and when leaders put the safety and lives of the people first over their own comfort, amazing things happen. As a Product Manager you need to be willing put your team first and be willing to sacrifice your own needs and ego for the success of the team.
On diversity and inclusion, Renee has seen both conscious and unconscious bias in terms of sexism and racism and that diversity and inclusiveness still have a lot of room for improvement. It’s not to say that every company experiences this, but to be aware that it is in no way isolated from it. Some of it she feels it comes from a genuine belief that it doesn’t exist, so it goes unnoticed. We cannot assume where individual bias comes from in terms of diversity and inclusion, although she does note that some bias around delivery and timelines may stem from the practices of industries employees came from prior to the tech space.
In a Product Manager role, she noted that at worst you are a secretary, and at best you are an entrepreneur. Similar to Lemay who emphasized that if it needs to get done it is part of your job but, not part of your job to do everything or be good at everything. When Seth Godin talked about not inventing a concept, but just showing up to lead it, he highlights what an entrepreneur needs to be able to do. Renee and I discussed how you don’t need to start your own company to be an entrepreneur and that promotion to management positions has not always been focused on who can do these things, rather who was good at the specific role or job they performed.
In Karen Eber’s “How your brain responds to stories”, she emphasizes the need to “help people be their best, to be successful, but we are hardly giving our best service by applying this one sized fits all approach and letting people fall through the cracks. We can and we should do better”. When watching this video, I was reflecting on how this statement applies to both Renee’s approach to Product Management and how you lead your team, as well as how you meet users needs.
When asked for any advice she may have for people looking to go into Product Management, she cautioned to take everything with a grain of salt. When looking at potential employers, inquire and understand if they focus on delivery over discovery.
My discussion with Renee went by quickly and I was very grateful for her time to share her experience and wisdom. I gravitate to the types of people who tell you the honest truth without sugar coating it, and I appreciated her frankness about some of the cultural challenges I may still see in the industry. Renee is very experienced and knowledgeable about Product Management and as we talked, she helped me understand more of the skills and experience I can bring to the table in a Product Management role. As I asked questions or tried to relate what she was saying to my own experiences she was easily able to support or correct my assumptions in a way that made me adapt and change my thinking through the interview. The result was a really enjoyable meeting and a much better outcome than had I just stuck to my preset questions. Evaluate and adapt couldn’t have been a better lesson to experience for this interview.
LeMay, M. (2018). Product management in practice: A real-world guide to the key connective role of the 21st Century. O’Reilly.
Karen Eber, “How your brain responds to stories — and why they’re crucial for leaders,” TED, February 10, 2021, YouTube video, 14:07, https://youtu.be/uJfGby1C3C4.
Simon Sinek, “How good leaders make you feel safe,” TED, May 19, 2014, YouTube video, 11:59, https://youtu.be/lmyZMtPVodo.
