Product Management
An Interview with Curtis Hess, Product Manager at Enverus and Sam Swain, Sr. Manager API Sales at Benevity
My first thought when thinking about an informational interview to learn more about Product Management was to try and find someone who started their career with a similar education and background to myself. I thought this would help me more clearly see how my own transition might unfold, from energy professional to tech underling. I hoped the interview would give me a glimpse into a typical work day for a Product Manager (if there was such a thing) and I was curious if they could identify any skills from previous work or life experiences that had helped them succeed. I was lucky enough to chat with two different Product Managers, who each had unique experiences but similar insights into this key connective role.
While scouring LinkedIn for Product Managers I stumbled across a few ex-geologists who were working at a company whose name I had heard before but knew very little about. Enverus I discovered, is the largest SaaS (software as a service) company solely dedicated to the largest market in the world- Energy. A global company serving 6000 customers in 50 countries, Enverus’ head office is located in Austin, Texas but they also have a local office right here in Calgary. Servicing the full energy value chain they provide solutions for exploration and production, midstream, downstream, land and power, and financial services. Enverus specializes in highly technical insights and analytics to empower customers to make decisions that increase profits. The website boasts multiple software platforms with eye catching graphics to quickly visualize mass amounts of QC’d data. This sounded perfect! I quickly “cold messaged” Curtis Hess to set up a chat and he gladly agreed, which I later learned was because of our shared work history as Geologists at Pengrowth.
What Really Do They Do
Self described as “stumbling” into the position of Product Owner whilst being an unemployed geologist, Curtis describes these early days as mainly the execution of tasks and working closely with the technology side of the business. In another organization, he mentions this same role might have been called a Junior Product Manager and he talks about how the titles and the shifting responsibilities can get a bit “fuzzy.” Two years into his career at Enverus, Curtis is now a Product Manager focused on strategic big picture business goals. His days are filled with communication among the teams, providing guidance, soliciting feedback from various stakeholders, attending client demos, analyzing product analytics, evaluating sales numbers, and doing all this influencing without any real authority over anyone. He creates alignment and understanding across the teams and just as Lemay mentions in his book, “Product Management in Practice” communication seems to be far and away the most important skill he uses on a daily basis. (Lemay, 2018)
Best and Worst
“Product discovery is the best part. Trying to uncover the interdependencies is the worst.” Curtis says this so matter of factly that even though I have never worked as a Product Manager, I wholeheartedly feel like I agree. Marty Cagan, a Silicon Valley based product “guru” describes it as, “First, you need to discover whether there are real users out there that want this product… Second, you need to discover a product solution to this problem that is usable, useful and feasible.” (Cagan, 2008) This time of discovery and exploration while you are just on the precipice of your idea, before you’ve taken the leap of faith does sound exciting, and I imagine it’s because nothing has really gone “wrong” yet. While trying to implement the product development tool of A/B testing, teams constantly run into numerous interactions amongst tests that must be untangled to accurately quantify results, and this sounds like it could be a difficult and frustrating task.
Skills to Set you Apart
I asked Curtis if there were any skills that he had from his previous work experience that helped him succeed as a product manager and I found his answer really interesting. He compared the skills he used as a geologist during oil and gas exploration to some of the key qualities needed to succeed in his role as a product manager. “In both scenarios you do all the up front work you can to de-risk your decision, and while this helps you to make the best possible guess about the result, in the end, after drilling a new exploration oil well or releasing a new product, you still must be comfortable being wrong.” He went on to say “7 out of 10 products fail in the same way that exploration drilling results in success only 3 out of ten times.” With his previous training as a geologist Curtis had cultivated a growth mindset. In both professions he needed to be comfortable with risk and ambiguity, and understand the importance of making the tough but necessary decisions needed to get the job done.
“7 out of 10 products fail in the same way that exploration drilling results in success only 3 out of ten times.”
Sam Swain, a previous Product Manager, turned Sales Manager at Benevity attributes his success as a Product Manager to time spent being the captain of a team while playing organized sports. “Trust is the foundation of the team and the leaders job is to lift the team up and create connection to ultimately bring out the strengths of each individual team member.” He mentioned doing things for people, going out of his way to help them, and in times when he needed someone to step up, they always did, gladly. This reminded me of the tip in Mat Lemay’s chapter on showing up curious, to build the bridges before you need something. Sam shares that with these things in place, eventually the team begins to run like a well oiled machine. When they would miss a target, they would give constructive feedback, learn and plan to do better on their next sprint, each one was a reset and chance to do better.
Sam goes on to emphasize the importance of communicating with stakeholders and instead of focusing on feature delivery, focus on trying to deliver on an outcome. Getting the organization to think about how they can deliver on a business objective and how to prioritize tasks and communicate the timeline surrounding the work as it relates to the objective. This way you haven’t gotten into a tricky situation where you said you’d do this specific feature by this specific date, you can instead point towards the work trends as they relate to your goal and adjust the timeline and targets accordingly.
On Landing a Product Role
Subject matter experts (SME’s) are highly skilled individuals who have an in depth expertise around a specific segment of the business and Curtis highlights this as an alternate way to get a foot in the door. Starting off on the intelligence team and working closely with the technology side you can learn the in depth analysis and research needed to deliver valuable product to your customer. Alternatively, he points towards joining through a more client facing role where you really hone your understanding of the customer needs and client stories. This reinforced that there isn’t always a clear and direct path into “Product” and that spending time working in other areas of the business is a valuable exercise that brings a wealth of knowledge to the Product team.
Tools of the Trade
In 2020 Covid disrupted all formal training, and therefore Curtis attributed most of his learning to on the job and “book learning.” He has various Scrum and Agile Certifications listed on LinkedIn but he also suggests hitting up the local library for resources and googling words like Trello, Jira, Agile, and Kanban. “Lots of programs have a free trial, so just try making a Kanban board to help prioritize tasks around anything. Something as simple as managing your husbands To-Do list around the house will help to learn about the types of tools we use.”
Throughout our conversation Curtis makes comments and references back to some of his favourite books:
Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, Marty Cagan
Hooked, How to Build Habit-Forming Practices, Nir Eyal
Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy, Cindy Alvarez
Final Thought
I think this excerpt from my chat with Sam truly sums it all up best: “Product management is not a terribly difficult job to do. It’s a difficult job to be really good at it. You need to be very organized and disciplined and even once you’ve learned all this theory, until you’ve done it for a few months you don’t really know what you are doing. When you work hard and you work well with other people and develop a reputation as somebody that can be flexible and get a job done and get a good result, then people are willing to take a chance on you.” In this ever evolving connective role I will continue to show up curious, work hard and try to get the job done.
References
LeMay, M. (2018). Product management in practice: A real-world guide to the key connective role of the 21st Century. O’Reilly.
Cagan, M. (2008). Inspired: How to create products customers love. Sunnyvale], Calif: SVPG Press.
First Round Review. “This Former LinkedIn Product Manager’s Surprising Leadership Formula.” Fast Company. Fast Company, July 7, 2017. https://www.fastcompany.com/3062156/this-former-linkedin-product-managers-surprising-leadership-formula.
