Product management models of despair and awakening

 

How do you build a good product strategy?  A rather classic, default formula is described above. You analyze the competition, you study the market, talk to some experts and persona some customers. Then build and test and role out and pivot and all that tiresome stuff. This is horrible.

Why is it horrible? Because it is the same as a high school essay. You get a prompt, reflect on your life, maybe read a couple books for inspiration, and then cobble together an essay with 5 paragraphs. You probably start writing a terrible paragraph in the beginning, get more succinct as you go along, then rewrite the intro to align with everything else.  In the end you have a coherent product. The downside is that you wasted a lot of time reinventing the "why." 

There is nothing wrong with this approach. But is standard across the industry because for two reasons - it tends to work - and of equal importance, almost anyone can do it. Most universities are not training students to be product managers. It is a generalist discipline. They are trained in business, or computer science, marketing, social science, or humanities. They become product managers because they see an opportunity to supply their broad knowledge with a specific process. They have some level of authority within an organization. I would argue that most people who are product managers do it because they love the idea of the job, and they might also like the product, but probably not as much as the job itself. 

There are other ways to do this. One should indulge in divergent research.  While the image below is amorphous to interpret, it captures the same details as the standard product management model (above) though with a focus on materiality. This element is key. Products are not ideas. They are things. Digital software is a product. Products are intentionally crafted materials that function as a point of change for the user(s). An insurance policy can be a product, because the specific language of that policy was carefully crafted to determine how a person's life will function in relation to a catastrophic event. The distinction between 20 paid physical therapy sessions or 30 can have a major impact on the person's future. A piece of software is no different - if you must spend time searching for features, are uncertain when you need the tool, or ignore half of the software components - the product might not be well designed for you. 

The questions of product development go far beyond immediate usability. They are questions of market fit, acquisitions, and adaptation. How will demand for this product change over time, and who will have that demand? Under what conditions will the product be successful, and when will it not be successful. How much should it cost to build? How and where do people physically acquire it and at what price?

The answers are not easily distilled, nor should the answers be determined lightly. While a simple conversation might inspire a range of insights - everything should be treated as a hypothesis.  But the constant focus on documents fails to capture the material future of the product, and the only way to reconcile the gap, is to immerse oneself into the environments, the populations, and the materials wherein the prospective product will reside. 

So do the work. Immerse yourself. Make things physical. Quit waving your hands. Stop trying to talk to everyone and spend more time identifying the conversations that matter. Stop trying to be clever, and get personal, become a part of the problem you are hoping to solve. Do you have this problem in your life? Do you actively benefit from this product? If your answer is no, then you are probably the wrong person for the job, or you aren't doing your job right.

Product management that matters is a matter of ingress and egress. Like a good anthropologist, you need one foot in the world of the customer and one foot out. How do you know when you made it? Usually because you broke something "in the system" - you crossed a line of distinction, and are no longer an outsider in the eyes of the stakeholders. You are part of the problem. It is uncomfortable. You might be in jail. You might be injured. You might even just be bored, but now you it the line and it is time to pull back one step. 

Do not wave your hands and apply a generic formula for generic people to generic customers. Embrace the magic that flows through the world, dig into the the problem, become the world's greatest expert on the problem from all points of view, and let the solution realize itself through you. Let it awaken.

Engage the world, have a vision, build a city, now go die in it.

Building a company isn't for everyone, and for those who love it, it is an act of sadism. The impetus to build a company is rooted in deep feelings, deep primitive reactions to the world. It is founded on anger, from not fitting in, and from a desire to own your own destiny. It is not a lifestyle or a privilege or an achievement, it is an act of vengeance upon everything that is wrong with society.

Building a company is not the same as making a product. When you make a project, you take an action and you get a response. You put paint on the canvas and it just remains there. It doesn't change. It doesn't talk back. It just sits there until you push it again. As a leader, your job is to create systems for other people to succeed. You must invent systems to hire people, to give them direction, and to help them flourish. You must create systems to help people communicate, to manage each others feelings, and to make progress toward your goal. You must create systems to make them feel considered, to recognize their own visions, and to passionately work toward yours.

But then what happens? You found and inspired people with a codified approach to realize your dream. What does that become? Where does it go? After you build the ship, can you still steer it forward? If there is a challenge ahead, that might keep you grounded, it will make or break you. But what if there is no immediate threat? Where do you go? 

With or without the challenge, you will find a moment of decision, when it is most difficult to remain clear headed and you must persevere. You will find a moment where your previous methods didn't work. You won't working right. You landed the spaceship on the alien landscape and there is no oxygen in place. You try to stick to your gut, or you open you mind, either way you double-down on the direction to see it through. And then you die. There is no air. There was no lifeboat. You were alone and you died alone. 

If along the way you found others who really understand what it is like to drown and resuscitate, then maybe they can give you the right coaching. They can't make oxygen from ether, but maybe they could have told you to prepare and you listened. Maybe they were wrong and you prepared the wrong way. Maybe it all came together and you made it out alive.

Can you make it out alive? All the anger in the world is not enough to save you, and so at some point, the piss and vinegar that gave you fuel to create will ruin you. You must change. What do trap rappers rap about when they become millionaires? Many of them still rap about dealing drugs and fighting gangs. They never cross this chasm. What do great comedians tell jokes about once they told all their personal stories and stories about travel? They need a new act. Many never find one. 

Heidegger said that moments of revelation are when the scrim is pulled back, and you can see the tower on the hill. It was always there, but you could never see it. Heidegger was wrong. The tower is only there if you want it to be, and you don't pull back the scrim, you build the tower. You incentivize others to build it with you and it becomes a city.

Engage the world.

Craft a vision. 

Build a city.

Now go die in it.