Product Managers are like Rock Bassists
At last year’s Mind The Product Conference in San Francisco, Ken Norton compared good interdisciplinary team work with music ensembles.
He starts his presentation wondering which musical role the PMs have: Are they the conductors because their work only becomes tangible through the work of others? Not quite, because conducting sheet music misses all the ambiguity and the need for adaptation that makes modern Product Management challenging and fun.
Jazz and its uncertainty, spontaneity and energy seems a more suitable genre. Among other things Ken talks about Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue album as an example for great collaboration based on a deliberately open guidance by Miles for his group of talented specialists and how he took chance as enrichment rather than failure (i.e. using Jimmy Cobb’s mistaken use of the Crash cymbal not to stop recording but instead kicking off Miles’ famous trumpet s0lo).
Ken continues to draw parallels about how getting uncomfortable, listening carefully and letting everyone solo are classical traits of Jazz that apply well to today’s world of cross-functional teamwork.
Even before Ken Norton’s presentation on the big stage, Jeff Gothelf and Jim Kalbach very nicely pointed out the parallels between great Jazz and team work: Below is a recording of one of their sessions where they play Jazz improvisation and talk about the roles of Patterns, Empathy and Uncertainty as factors that let ensembles and teams alike succeed.
While I really like the analogies of Jazz and cross-functional teamwork I must admit that at some point I kept wondering which role in such a music ensemble would best reflect the role of the PM. Ken Norton seems to compare the PM with the genius band leaders like Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington — but at the same time also points out that these genius leaders were not particularly nice people to be with or work with. In any case I had the feeling that saying all Product Managers should aspire to be like Miles, Ella or Duke is just as misleading as the common notion of Steve Jobs as the perfect product person.
Let’s face it: Most of us are no geniuses, no Steves, not Miles’, no Ellas — and that is totally OK!
But if we want to stick to the nice music metaphor, which role best describes the PM role?
It’s the Bass!
Given the occasional hype about Product Managers as the new “Rockstars” it may at first sight surprise you if I say that I want to draw comparisons between PM and Bass players (traditionally not the most glamorous role in rock bands).
Let me explain:
- First and most obviously: Bassists are part of the band (unlike conductors), but need to leverage themselves through others. There’s a reason why there are VERY few solo bassists and even practicing bass is not much fun alone. The same is true for PM: Without a team a Product Manager is pretty useless and most skills that you need to learn as a PM and that distinguish good and bad PM are matters of interaction with other team members (or “the audience” aka users and stakeholders).
- Bassist need to connect with different disciplines: In a band they are part of the rhythm section, but they are also a harmonic instrument and thus have to work with other harmony instruments and vocalists. This reminds me of the importance of PM acting as “translators” between different experts on their team as well as outside their team.
- Good rock bassists are usually fine letting others stand in the spotlight (like a PM should when it comes to product reviews) but at the same time keen to set the direction for the song. As an example take U2’s Adam Clayton in one of the band’s most important “products”. While his bass line get’s increasingly layered with vocals, guitars and keyboards throughout the song I would argue that the song is pretty much shaped by the simple bass line.
- Speaking about simplicity here’s my last and possibly most important comparison: Product Managers are usually most impactful if they focus on clear, simple yet distinct messages. The same “clarity over virtuosity” paradigm is true for rock bassists.Take for instance Kim Deal’s famous bass line in ‘Gigantic’: It’s so simple that it was one of the first bass lines I learned when I taught myself how to play the bass as a teenager, nevertheless I consider the bass line (possibly in combination with Kim’s background vocals) the core of what makes ‘Gigantic’ so memorable.
Now that I have disclosed that I’m a rock bassist as well it’s very obvious that my comparison is a very biased one. This is why I would be really curious to hear how you feel about these comparisons or which instrument you think has the most similarities to the role of Product Managers.
