Product Manager or User Attorney?
Product Management from an outsider perspective
“Thank you for representing me. My situation would be much worse without your research, diligence, and hard work.”
— Confidential Client Message to his Attorney
From ML Engineers to Technical Program Managers, nowadays, most of us seem to have jobs that are very difficult to explain to our parents. A Product Manager position is no exception. Even within companies who hold PM teams, there can easily be some uncertainty over what the role is and what precisely it entails. And when you ask PMs, they usually say that the PM role contains almost every part that IT companies may have. But isn’t it too much for one person to cover all of these positions? The truth is that a PM can be involved in almost anything if there are no clear responsibilities defined by the company they are working for. PMs wear many hats, and it can be difficult to succinctly explain to outsiders what the job involves. How can we condense it down to an elevator pitch when it involves so much? What makes this task even harder is that each product requires a slightly different PM, depending on factors like industry, B2B vs. B2C, digital vs. traditional, software vs. hardware…the list is endless.
There is a manager title in the role; however, they usually do not supervise any team (engineering, marketing, and UX) needed to execute those goals. This aspect can be disturbing, irritating, and frustrating if not handled properly. But if you think more deeply for a second, you will understand that in reality, they have much more power than the authority given by their superiors. The power is provided by the users, and users don’t like when that power is used not to serve them but to screw them over. This article might be very subjective, but here is what I, as an outsider, think the PM role should look like. And first of all, if you’ll let me, I’ll refer to the product manager as “user attorney” in this article.
Heres the way I see the responsibilities and primary duties of the User Attorney:
Listen to your client
The first responsibility of a User Attorney is to listen to the user, the person whom they represent in court. The court, in this case, will be the company, and all the stakeholders will be the Jury. User Attorneys are also problem-solvers, so this can be tough. After all, if they’re jumping ahead to the solution, then they’re no longer listening. When every conversation becomes an echo of the previous one, you know they’re onto something. They should never stop learning about the user. The market will change, the product will change, and the ideal user might change, too, throughout the user lifecycle. It’s their job to always keep up-to-date with the target market and its needs. When I imagine someone doing this, it might take 80% of their day. So for god’s sake, how can they manage to do the rest of the unnecessary stuff? Imagine if the Attorney does not do the proper research; it could lead to his client being jailed. Maybe for the users, it will happen as they become bored by the useless product and start spending their time doing some illegal stuff.
Even when you know what your product offers and what you’re genuinely selling, your users might have a completely different idea. If you listen, they’ll tell you. User research is your biggest weapon, and it can easily amplify your business. Most ethical lawyers are those who put their clients’ interests ahead of their own.
Sell it to the Jury
Let’s assume you already know what your users want; now, you need to persuade your Jury. To achieve this, you need more than logical arguments. Persuasion is more than convincing. This strategy uses appeals to both emotion and reason. Belief includes getting the audience on your side by maximizing your strong points and minimizing your weaknesses. You need to convince everyone, including your Managers, Engineers, Marketers. And the only way to do it is to be 100% sure that this is what your users want; if you would know that, you will only need to add some excellent speech to it and salt it with more facts using the data.
Get the best deal
Now, when you have convinced the Jury and know what your users want exactly, its time to get the best deal. And the best deal should be even more than your user requested. This, and only this way, is how you can get your user delighted. Now, let’s get back to the real-life of our User Attorney; when I say getting the best deal, I mean building the best product for the user. The building doesn’t mean engineering it yourself but means making sure that everything will be flawless. All parties involved are aware that you will sue them if they do not get the product with the best quality, best experience, and the best cost to your user on time.
I believe that what makes a good lawyer is the same qualities that make a good product manager, and those qualities are research skills, analytical skills, and people skills. The ability to draw reasonable, logical conclusions or assumptions from limited information is what makes a good product manager. I hope this article will help product managers to stop doing all unnecessary jobs, such as managing teams and projects or wasting time on operations. It might be discouraging to not have a team or to not be doing hands-on project management, but believe me, what you are doing is much more critical; you save and improve lives. So stick to these three duties: listen to your users, convince everyone, and build perfect products.
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