Has Product Management stressed all your weak points?
I've been a Product Manager for 4 years. Coming into the field, I was intelligent by most standards, well-rounded (or so I thought), and ready to learn on a dime. Since then, I have been constantly humbled, embarrassed, and over my head. It seems like I am constantly witnessing all my weaknesses and bad habits turn into enormous disasters. It has required me to face all my fears and insecurities, learn skills I previously shunned, and clean out all my past emotional baggage. Every day, I survive to the next, make some happy customers, and get a good performance review, and enjoy the little things. However, I'm still haunted by my inability to address certain types of problems well, certain types of customer meetings, and certain types of presentations. All my worry and mental effort goes there, trying to avoid the massive pile of shit I usually create, lessen it, find a bigger shovel, or find someone with the right advice to help me solve my massive shit problem. Who else is having an experience like this? Why the fuck are we PMs?
So for me it is a lot of "I could've done that better", which makes me question my ability and feel inadequate. I attribute it to doing so many different tasks all at once. My time is stretched thin and I don't have all day to devote to a single task. Instead of knocking a single task out of the park my job is to complete 5 very different tasks to a satisfactory level. IMO, prioritization is one of the most challenging job aspects for a PM but also one I enjoy.
My experience is similar. My problem, though, is explaining to my managers why all their little things are getting done but their big things are inching along, and then asking which little things can be cut. I never get an answer. Seems like they just want me to figure it out somehow.
I've been a PM for six or seven years now and I still can feel inadiquite some times... But I've been promoted to Sr and on track to principal next review cycle. The turning point for me was when I said "fuck it", and started focusing my time on the shit I thought was important vs all of the crap I thought I had to do. One book that helped change my attitude was "the subtle art of not giving a fuck". Frankly I think I'm building a better product, have the metrics to back it up and I'm communicating more effectively with execs.
How long ago did you read it?
Maybe six to nine months ago. I was feeling trapped by all the non-value add activities PMs at big companies have to do on a daily basis. I transferred some to the program manager and Dev manager... And just stopped doing the rest.
My feelings as well!! I am intelligent, smart, funny person and I feel so confident outside of my office, but when you have to jungle so many priorities, manage so many opinions and please so many managers and customers, I am kinda starting to lose it even though my results are very good. I start to question myself and feel my weaknesses. I need to read that book.
Good PMs are their own worst critic. We're a mile wide and an inch deep, never truely an expert in anything but an expert in everything at the same time. I'm 8yrs in, and find humility to be a great driver of my own performance...which on paper is being promoted 3x in 4yrs.
Dude YES. This is a GREAT position to be in. Fail, learn, get embarrassed, pivot, out of your depth, drown, learn to swim, drown again, get reborn, confuse, enlighten, argue, bootstrap, launch, commit, learn. These are the sounds of you buckling under the immense load of a steep learning curve. You’re going through your own personal renaissance forged in the couldrons of failure. If you make it, you’ll come out the other side as a resourceful, intuitive, tenacious, ruthless leader ready to get shit done.
Sounds good, but does it ever end? PMs I've asked say that product never gets easier. If that's true, the questions for me are how do I enjoy a higher percentage of my time in the role? And/or when will it be time to get off? I don't want to stress constantly my entire life.
I’m an SDM; PMs are my counterparts. The biggest problem I’ve seen in PMs is that they’re trying to do too many things all at once rather than focusing on the few important things. I have no idea where their time goes. Good PMs know how to prioritize well. Btw, I’m looking for a PM counter part, for an Alexa project. If you’re a PM who knows how to focus on the important things, PM me :) No pun intended.
Out of curiosity, what are you thinking are the important things? I get similar judgment from my dev manager that she thinks I should be doing more with my time, but she only sees the tip of the iceberg. There is so much admin and meetings and junk to deal with that I have a very small amount of discretionary time. I have to fight, steal, or simply take every minute of it away from someone else who's trying to grab it.
Just as you say “There is so much admin and meetings and junk to deal with”. To me the PM is responsible for setting the project direction, and looking at the data and/or user feedbacks to generate the road map. If the road map isn’t clear then the team’s efforts won’t be well spent. If the PM is trying to take on too many bets all at once, then the team won’t get anything done. Not all the meetings are important, and not all feature requests, ideas will give you the same ROI. Focus on the ones that you think will actually get you somewhere, and let the rest slide. Use the 20/80 rule. If it’s 2 days before the start of the sprint and what we’re doing in the next sprint isn’t clear, then that’s a problem.
Great discussion. We have a forum of fellow pms to discuss such situations in our company where pms bring in their issues and talk situations and get advice and pointers. What helped me so far is to be very transparent there and be able to take feedback and implement it.
That's awesome! Good for you all. Walmart Labs only?
Yep but I’d love to create an open community. I donno if there is one already out there
So much humble pie! I think what it’s done though is make me a better listener, which is critical for the role. Deb Liu recently said in Forbes that the PM role is not to make all the decisions (unlike what you sometimes hear or read), but to make sure all the decisions are made. Meaning we don’t have all the answers, but we still need to know how to guide the team into making whatever the right decisions are, by whoever is best equipped to make them, and make sure everything makes sense and is part of a cohesive strategy. This one piece of advice really resonated with me. Also, while you own the narrative, to get there, you need to rely on the expertise of others. We as PMs have a set of soft skills that are hard to articulate sometimes, and are crucial to launching impactful products, but it’s easy to forget that when the engineers, data scientists, etc are all so brilliant and have more straightforward skill sets.
Because these problems are interesting and important to focus on so that good code can live, ship and prosper. But... if you’re not having a good time with it, you don’t have to force yourself to stay in this role.
Which problems are interesting and important to focus on? Your personal ones? Or the general day to day?
How good a piece of code is written or the technical merits has only a loose relationship with whether something ships or succeeds. The remaining issues outside the code? That’s our set of problems as PMs. They are fascinating, and important in making something people use and love.