Writing from Privilege

Product Management is about delivering value, whatever that means to your current status.

Well, this took way longer than expected, but suddenly I had an urge to explore Hyrule and decided to use my free time on that.
All my admiration goes out to everyone who can manage a full-time job, share their ideas regularly, enjoy family time, and have time for themselves.

Not long ago, I was reading a book on product management, and a particular phrase really triggered a thought. It wasn’t a mistake or a framework that we would particularly disagree with, but it was that phrase that implies an “ought to.”

Paraphrasing and using a bit of my imagination: Product management should be like this, and if you are not doing it, then you are wrong. you should do it like this if you want to practice real Product Management, not that sub-quality product management (in lowercase) that you are currently practicing.

And I know, we read books, newsletters, and listen to podcasts to learn and improve what we are doing. But it is not the same to read: “Hey, look at this new cool thing I did, and I did it like this,” versus “Hey, this is the only way to do things, and if you want to succeed, you have to do it exactly like me.”

I understand that there are plenty of people trying to sell their ideas (to be paid via money, or just reads), and this type of rhetoric is useful to sell them. But we must be wary of it.

Some of us work in product-driven companies, some in sales-driven companies, others are family or leadership-driven, and many others are in survival mode.

As Product Managers, we do what we can, given the circumstances we are presented with. We cannot read a book and come back saying, “let’s change everything because Netflix or TikTok or any-other successful-innovative,-product-driven company does it,” and then feel guilty because we are not able to replicate that.

Whenever I read this type of material that aims at creating FoMO more than educating, I keep thinking this is in the same category as influencers who push for unrealistic bodies.

Having the opportunity to work at a top 1% company, using whatever ranking we like, has a big dependence on chance. It doesn’t matter how skilful, smart, or intelligent we are; if we are not given a chance, we are out of luck. We need to be in the right country, we have to be looking for a job when they are looking for a person, among many things more.

As a Product Manager in a company, our job is to deliver value to the company. Whatever value means. And as Product Management professionals, our job is to keep learning and adding tools to our toolkit. Our job is never to feel guilty because we cannot do what other PMs are doing.

Sometimes it is not only the wording that will help you trigger your warning flags, we should also be careful of that advice that will put you against our team. Have you heard the expression, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”? After learning new skills as a PM that we really want to try, then besides implementing them as part of a strategy, we should also aim to influence the cultural strategy at our organisation. We must be careful of material that will put us at odds with the culture or will poison it.

I have to be careful here, because I want to emphasise that I am not advocating for mediocrity or conformity. My message is to be careful of people who want to make us feel guilty, instead of helping us learn.

About Hyrule, I did manage to free it from Ganondorf, bring back Zelda to the present, plus finish all but some of the secondary missions. I guess in good PM Influencer style I should write: I finished Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and this is what I learned about Product Management.

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This post was improved with Gemini. It helped with grammar and some style edits. It also created the image accompanying it. I tried with ChatGPT like almost always, but Gemini did a better job.