0. Product is a team sport
Building a great product isn't just about the product manager
Welcome! I’m Vincent and this is a Product Manager’s Notebook, a series of notes for people who are interested in sharing and learning the art of product management and career development. You can read my archive here.
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“Why should I approach customers for them? Aren’t they the product manager? Why should I do their job for them?"
A friend of mine was recently approached by their PM to help with product discovery. They weren’t keen.
This reminded me of a talk that Christian Idiodi from the Silicon Valley Product Group recently gave in our New York office on the topic: “Product management is a Team Sport". The central theme was that the way clients and prospects perceive your product is through any and all interactions - whether it’s your customer support team, sales people or your product team. He’s an engaging speaker and had some great stories to share.
At first, I felt that the target audience was the folks in the room who didn’t have “product” in their title like Marketing, Sales or Customer Support. I don’t know too many PMs who sit in their ivory tower making product decisions alone. So why are there so many teams that feel that sense of alienation from the product?
From my experience, it’s because they don’t feel any sense of ownership for the product. They don’t feel like their feedback matters or that they’re involved in growing the product. Why should they be part of the process if the results don’t matter?
This is failure that lies mainly with the product team. It should be a fact that it's not just the “product manager” who’s responsible for the Product. We all are. It’s actually fantastic when the Sales person comes up with a great idea for a product enhancement on the back of client conversations, or when Engineering has suggestions for the build based on testing results and their own extensive experience working with our code base. The PM’s job (but I think important to note - not sole responsibility) is to ensure that they get all teams to think this way to bring the product into focus. The alternative is a disassociation with the product and "why me" mentality, that results in missed opportunities and expensive risks that could've been identified much earlier.
Yes, product management is not a siloed discipline and I hope that's a message that all teams - both product teams and their partners- hear more often, and build better products as a result.
And if Product teams want this to be the case, PMs need to do what we do best - be the glue that brings all them together.