The 3 Curses of Product Management
I had breakfast the other day with a sharp future product manager who is finishing an MBA at Brigham Young University, and he asked about the top pitfalls for Product Managers. I’d thought I’d share my thoughts — I call them the three curses of product management.
1. The “It’s Working as Intended” Curse. Prior to being in product leadership, I ran customer success at a tech company. There were so many times that we brought issues customers were having with the software to product managers and they would say, “It’s working as intended.” I would cringe every time I heard that! In fact, I still get a nervous tick if someone whispers it over my shoulder. What they were saying is that there isn’t a bug — that’s the way the software is supposed to work, so deal with it. It doesn’t matter if the software is working as it was designed. What matters is if the software is solving the customer’s problem. What matters is if the software is doing the job the customer needs done.
Product managers can fall into the trap that if it isn’t a bug then it doesn’t need to be addressed. Issues from customers that aren’t bugs are actually the biggest issues because it means when the product is working properly (as designed) it is falling short. These customers don’t stick around. Compare this to a product that may have a few bugs, but does solve the problem. Users of that product will likely stick around.
2. The Shiny New Penny Curse. Building new stuff is always more fun. There are interesting new problems to solve, you get to start fresh without a bunch of baggage, and new stuff brings fun product launches, high fives and celebration. The more new stuff we build, the more momentum and progress we feel. BUT if this happens at the expense of current products, there is a BIG problem.
In the same way that quick and dirty software development can build up tech debt, sloppy PM work can build up customer debt. Customer debt means you aren’t solving the customer’s problem to the fullest extent or there are just enough problems with your product that the customer’s pain is piling up. If customer debt is left unaddressed their usage will fall off a cliff and you won’t be able to get it back. Customer debt can be very hard to repay if it collects too much interest! Existing products must be actively cared for — this means monitor key metrics, optimizing the product to hit your usage goals, and having a plan to address bugs (or at least communicate back to customers so they know what to expect). Once your house is in order, then you can go build the shiny new thing. But remember that it’s not an either/or. You have to constantly balance existing and new.
3. The Communication Curse. Often product managers think of communication as grabbing a megaphone and telling everyone what they need to know, then they drop the mic and consider the communication done. Slack message sent. Email sent. Training done. The problem is that communication only truly happens when it is received — not given. That means communicating to people in the WAY and TIME the need to receive it, and with the right FREQUENCY. And that might mean 4 different ways at 6 different times. I’ve never seen a Product Manager over communicate — it’s not a thing. The best way to figure out the WAY, TIME, and FREQUENCY is to ask the receiver. And then assume you need to double it.
The good news is that these curses are all curable. The first step is to do some self-reflection and see if you’re showing any of the symptoms mentioned above. Excellent product managers are not people who have intermittent flashes of brilliance, rather they are people who consistently do the basics and do them well.
