In almost 20 years as a product manager, I have seen some concepts work, but many more fail. To this day, I can’t really recognize a pattern for success or failure. Concepts that I would bet a lot of money on don’t work at all. Others, in which I have little faith, scale fast.
I know two ways of looking at this phenomenon:
Either you believe that the result depends on the quality of product management. Then bad product management produces bad results, good product management produces good results. Then there are “good” and “bad” ideas that just need to be implemented.
Or you believe that success in product management is highly unpredictable. Then there are no “good” or “bad” ideas per se, but many factors surrounding them that determine success or failure and over which we only have a small amount of influence. Good product management can increase the probability of a concept’s success, but it cannot guarantee it.
I firmly believe in the second view. Because the history of successful companies is full of mistakes, coincidences and other unplannable circumstances (see Jessica Livington’s book “Founders at Work”, for example). Because I myself have seen many very good product managers succeed and fail under very similar circumstances.
Those who share this point of view quickly find their way to the approach of agile, lean, hypothesis-driven product management, which attempts to find methodical answers to tame the chaos and uncertainty of product development. Of courses, not always successful, but with significantly higher chances of success (even if, in cases of doubt, success only consists of abandoning an idea early to avoid burning money).
But what do “agile” and “lean” mean? The terms have largely taken on a life of their own in the decades since they were coined. They have become a multifaceted projection surface for a wide variety of trends. I often find it difficult to explain what they mean to me – especially to other product managers, regardless of their level of experience. With some, it is very easy to get on the same page, with others I can discuss for hours without with no outcome at all.
However, there is one big exception of people with whom this always works very easily: Scientists – even if they have no touchpoint with product management at all. My theory as to why this works: Scientists are trained from the outset to the view that success is not predictable, but that hypothesis-driven (in)validation is required in order to generate knowledge and progress (if they don’t already believe by nature and enter the profession for this very reason).
I have come to the conclusion that product management is essentially not a question of method, but a question of belief. Agile, lean, hypothesis-driven product management needs an environment in which Karl Popper is at least recognized and acknowledged to some extent.
And in my view, this is precisely the fundamental problem with product management today. Product management is far from being a profession in which the belief in the unpredictable is deeply rooted, because “management” itself has been geared towards the predictable at least since Henry Ford, driven by the belief that the right execution of the right ideas will certainly lead to success. This is reinforced by the fact that product management is not a corporate function that works on its own. It is dependent on many other functions and roles around it, i.e. the overall system of the company in which it is placed. And this management system is of course often a strong believer in the right execution of the right idea.
In order to survive in this system as an agile product manager, I see an increasing tendency to adapt to the system. For example, there is the idea of no longer calling an experiment an experiment because stakeholders and decision-makers can’t relate to the term or even oppose to it because it sounds too “uncertain”.
In my view, this approach is wrong for two reasons: Firstly, it does not help to tackle the real problem, which is that fundamental views and beliefs diverge. Secondly, it is an act of self-censorship that sooner or later leads to betraying one’s own beliefs. If you say “Gulf of America” long enough, you will eventually forget about the “Gulf of Mexico”.
Can and should I expect a C-level of a digital company to have a deep understanding of the different directions of product management and to make a conscious decision for or against something on this basis, instead of just being superficially enthusiastic about something and then questioning it again with the next decision? Absolutely!
So what can we do – especially in a social environment that increasingly desires simple solutions and rejects the complex?
I don’t know any other way than to sort out for yourself why you have which belief and therefore which idea of product management and then, in case of doubt, to stand up for this belief. This will be for sure exhausting as believe is not very open to rational discussions. If you run out of energy, the only option is to leave the system before it corrupts you.
Photo: „abandoned chocolate factory“ by Evan Bench, CC BY 2.0