PMs should stop worrying what others think

Dear adventurer,

I once had a boss who yelled at me for doing what she asked.

Yes, you read that right.

This was somewhat early in my career and I was new to the organization. So when a senior leader told me that we simply had to add a certain feature to our roadmap, I complied. Who was I to say no?

Well, the feature turned out to be a dud. And she was frustrated that we had implemented it.

What you choose to build is a great responsibility. Your decision will be continually judged — mainly by whether what you build is valued (and paid for) by customers.

The best product managers know this deeply. Part of your role is to consolidate input from company leaders, cross-functional teams, and partners — necessary and valuable feedback to be gleaned that can inform what comes next. You also need to track everything that is going on in the market as added context.

Product plans are always under pressure by internal and external forces. Everyone has an opinion. Every market has volatilities. There will be contradictions to navigate and complicated considerations to examine. Instead of being squeezed, you have to use that pressure as fuel to go boldly. Ultimately, you have to be the one who helps the team get aligned around the way forward.

You have to avoid making decisions out of concern for what others will think — lest you compromise your vision, the soul of your product. (And likely yourself too.)

If that sounds heavy it is because it is. Most of us want to be friendly. Cooperative relationships are quite literally what helped Homo sapiens outlast all other human species.

Being good-natured generally benefits us, which can make getting along feel as important as getting things done. It might feel good too ... but only in the moment.

Over the years, I have learned that it is possible to go boldly without veering into foolhardiness. The best product managers steer with conviction because you know that what others think of you can never be fully understood and certainly does not define you.

There are a few requirements to getting there though:

You have grounded assumptions

Assumptions underpin everything. This is your understanding of the problem that you want to solve and why it is worthwhile, based on your own assessment. You know your assumptions are grounded because you continually test them so that you can recognize when they need to be updated.

We do this formally as part of The Aha! Framework. Every six months during our strategic planning we review our assumptions across our suite of products.

You have a real point of view

You have a lens on the future. You know the value that you want to create and how you can solve what is most worth solving. At times it may feel like you are operating from intuition — that is how deeply you believe in what you are going after.

That conviction gives you strength to persevere but it also allows you to listen when there are other perspectives. This might seem counterintuitive, but in my experience it gives you a mission to pursue.

You engage with customers

Most of us are really bad at guessing what others think. (Even if we think we do it well.) That is why you must have conversations with actual customers. If your product has not yet launched, make it a top priority to have conversations with customer proxies.

Engaging with customers is so important that our product team has specific goals about the number of customer conversations we should have each month.

You use data cautiously

Data is too often a distraction. Many product managers think data can give you the answer (or even be the answer). So when decisions need to be made, it is tempting to push the “choice” onto experiments and tests. But for most products you will never achieve statistical significance with any A/B test in a reasonable time frame.

We have learned to lean on such tests only in areas of our products where there is significant customer usage. And even then, we make sure that what we implement is consistent with the standard we set for serving customers well.

You listen deeply

You mission fuels your curiosity. It also gives you the patience to keep listening until you reach understanding. Recently a customer pitched us on moving our idea management product in a new direction. The move would have solved a significant challenge for them. And it sounded exciting to us at first too.

But we followed our curiosity with patience, giving ourselves time to absorb and reflect. In the process we realized that the move would not be core to our vision.

You explain why you agree (or do not)

Articulating the why behind any decision is almost as important as the decision itself. You have to be able to take feedback, internalize against all of the above, and evangelize your plan with confidence and enthusiasm. This is especially important for folks who do not see it the same way you do.

In the situation I described with the customer’s pitch about our idea management product, we were able to go back in a thoughtful way and explain why we were not going to pursue the opportunity

You keep building

The best products come from making decisions in ambiguous situations and being prepared to iterate until you get it right. Iterating is not about testing everything. (We covered that already.)

It is about getting the product out in the market so that real people can use it. That way you can see how close you are to the solution, improve what you can, then keep improving.

The longer you work on a product the more you can grow and deepen your conviction. In turn, you can materially impact people’s lives — including your own.

Stop worrying how others perceive you or your plans. Stop looking to data to answer for you. Stop offloading decisions onto others.

You can work with those who have differing perspectives and hold true to your conviction and clarity of vision. You can have genuine excitement about your plans and the rationale behind them, while internalizing what others say even if you do not agree or it is uncomfortable.

Over time you will be able to anticipate, plan, and release new functionality for customers that you just know is right. That customer orientation matters, because they are the only ones who will pay for what you build.

So, who cares what others think? Not you and not me.

Yours with conviction,

Brian