Contra product management shibboleths

I just attended ProductCon in London. It’s a fun event, and kudos to the organisers for putting it together, finding good speakers, and managing the complex logistics of hosting an event for thousands of people.

While it’s always interesting to listen to and learn from leaders in successful companies from different industries, I can’t help feeling a little frustrated at the lack of nuance in the speeches I heard. So in this post, I want to critique some common beliefs held by product managers, and the tech community in general.

‘Be research- and/or data-led’

A number of speakers talked about how important it is to start with the customer, understand their needs, look at the data, and take it from there. Almost every start-up likes to claim they’re ‘obsessed about customers’ or that ‘data is in the DNA’, and similarly, LinkedIn is inundated with ‘customer-centric’ or ‘data-driven’ PMs.

This is all fine, but as I’ve said before, there is such a thing as being too data driven, and too customer-centric. After all, two of the most successful innovators in history did not exactly share the typical PM sentiment towards customer centricity and research:

My suggestion to aspiring presenters is to talk less about the importance of data and research, and more about how to develop better judgement, and in which cases one ought to rely on one or the other.

My own view is that in general, one ought to use judgement to form hypotheses (e.g. on customer needs, jobs to be done, solutions to these needs, messaging, branding, etc) and use data to validate or disprove these hypotheses.

‘Celebrate the rise of the CPO’

People at ProductCon were cheering at the rising importance of the Product function; one presenter celebrated the fact that 50% of Fortune 100 companies now have a CPO.

But creating a new C-level position suggests one of four things that have happened:

• There’s some new work that no-one was doing before, and a new department with a new leader is created to do it;

• there’s work that was being done by multiple people and departments, who are now overseen by a new leader;

• there’s work that was being done by a person whose title has now changed;

• a company wants to appear innovative and dynamic and has therefore created a new title, even though there’s neither substantial new work happening, nor any kind of re-org.

Undoubtedly all four scenarios are taking places across corporate America; but if you were to ask me to ask which is the most prevalent, I’d say they rank in reverse order from that in which I listed them. As we’ve seen with random companies appending ‘web3’ or ‘crypto’ or ‘AI’ to their mission statements, using buzzwords from tech is a (weirdly) effective way to remain relevant; and so, I think it’s more likely that a company has renamed its chief marketing officer to chief product officer, or that it tasked a new ‘CPO’ with ‘exploring ways of growing tech revenues’ than that Coca-Cola discovered an entirely under-exploited but highly lucrative revenue stream in the tech space, which requires a CPO to ‘activate’ it.

The fact is corporate America has long had ‘product managers’; they’ve just had different titles — at P&G they were called ‘brand managers’, for instance. The idea of a CPO only makes sense (to me at least) in companies whose digital assets (websites, apps) are their primary sales channel, and which therefore need an executive to oversee functions that are needed to support that channel (such as designers, UX researchers, and engineers). Though even then, I’d argue these functions could just report to the chief marketing officer.

‘Don’t pay attention to job titles’

One presenter gave the inevitable talk on managing one’s career. Most of her advice was sensible and good. (Coming out of the talk, I commented to my colleagues that a lot of what she said was cliche; that was uncharitable and mean — good advice is usually hackneyed, and shouldn’t be criticised on that basis, especially when delivered well.)

But, like many other talks on career management, she talked about how one should focus more on the content of the work one does, and the skills they’ll develop and the experience they will gain, than on job titles. She said that job titles don’t matter. But the fact is, they do: more ‘impressive’ titles usually also come with more money, and even more importantly, they’re a means of recognition. People don’t want to be promoted to ‘director’ because the word is inherently melodious and pleasing to the senses; they want to be promoted because that’s how they will feel recognised.

So people managers who hear these talks and then go to their team members and say ‘don’t focus on job titles’ are missing the point. Their reportees are not asking for the title, they are asking for acknowledgement of the value they bring and the work they’ve done.

(By the by, I remember a colleague recounting a marketing townhall at P&G; back then, entry-level marketeers were called ‘assistant brand managers’, and many hated the title. At the townhall, a senior marketeer (back then ‘associate director’) told people not to be so hang up on titles. So someone asked them whether they’d then be up for changing their title to ‘assistant director’. They were bemused.)

‘Focus on innovation’

I agree that innovation is important —companies live and die by it, I’ve said in another post. But technologists waay overestimate the importance and impact of rapid innovation. Basically, innovation only really confers an advantage when

• It addresses core customer needs. Some entrepreneurs produce software that is technically superior to that of incumbents in many ways, but which does not match the incumbents’ core functionality where it matters (or, perhaps, does match it but does not surpass it to an extent that warrants overcoming inertia) — a slicker interface or a more efficient tech stack doesn’t matter as new entrants might think (which is why, for instance, Excel reigns supreme despite many wannabe challengers).

• It is very hard to copy. Being first doesn’t matter in most cases, except in those where being first by a sufficient margin allows the first mover to create other advantages, such as economies of scale or network effects. And even then, history is full of examples of first movers who were eclipsed by subsequent entrants: Facebook wasn’t the first social network; Oreo wasn’t the first vanilla-filled cookie sandwich; Amazon wasn’t the first digital bookstore ; Spotify wasn’t the first music streamer; etc. And these were all innovations that were somewhat difficult to replicate, or which required significant investment to do so! Being ‘innovative’ does help because it buys publicity; but beyond that, I’d be weary of relying on speed of innovation alone to beat competitors.

‘Paper-pushers’

Finance teams are underpowered in the tech world; even now, in a world where VCs and start-ups are paying increasing attention to profitability, presenters at ProductCon were talking about how product need to become more commercially-minded, or how product needs to work closer with Go To Market teams. No-one mentioned the importance of having strong finance partners (although one speaker did talk about how she found finance interesting enough to do CIMA courses).

Indeed, finance managers are seen as paper-pushers or accountants, or at best, treasury managers and people to help with IR and fundraising. As a result, they are kept away from the business; in many companies, product managers rarely interact with finance. Hence, you end up with financial plans that are done top-down, without input from the business, and conversely, with product development that does not tie to profitability goals.

Good finance partners can

• Help create actual business plans instead of academic exercises, with concrete building blocks (e.g.: revenue/profit increase from new product development; marketing investments; sales channel expansion; etc)

• Build frameworks for prioritising among different feature ideas or investment asks (e.g: should you hire more sales people, or invest more in marketing?)

• Create compensation structures, set sales targets, monitor sales teams’ performance, and identify new opportunities (for instance, for cross-selling products, or identifying untapped customer segments)

• Analyse marketing spend, ROI, payback periods, etc, and optimise marketing mix

• Create pricing strategies, run promotions, etc.

I would encourage PMs to read more about finance concepts (you can start reading my posts on pricing, or the commercials of subscriptions!), and to work closer with their finance business partners!