Magic for Product Managers 🧙

When I started my job at Google in 2012 I was beyond nervous. Would my previous experiences be of any value? What would determine my success?

3 years prior I joined another big company which had a strong footprint in technology. Goldman Sachs’ biggest Department was Tech, and as an engineer I worked with my traders and the business daily. While tough, it provided stability, a clear sense of direction, and a strong incentive to provide value to the team.

Google would be different. As a PM I’d be the one thinking about where to spend resources, which Features to build, and what customer success would look like. It was the product teams that individuals look to for guidance.

The question I was asked by every person interviewing me was “How do you think you’ll cope with the difference in culture?” The question puzzled me, because I had never quite experienced Google culture before. It would take the better part of the next decade to develop this understanding.

Over this time I came to understand Google as a place where smart research met vigorous product and tech excellence. Having a smart idea, rooted in science and first Principle thinking, and pairing that with the incredible tech talent to deliver incredible products in many ways changed the world. But it was also a culture which required active awareness and management, and one which was tolerant to failure.

Working with research from day one at Google, it required a strong sense of value for research, while acknowledging the practical realities and constraints of delivering product. Not every mathematically perfect approach was practical to implement, nor feasible. Managing compromises that both sides felt good about was a big part of my first years.

Here is where I learned my first magic sentence:

#1: I have some thoughts here, but first I’d like to hear from you. What do you think?

This sentence revealed its power to me during a meeting a senior engineer had set up with me. He was deep into ads effectiveness research, worked for NASA before, and was tenured at Google. To say I was intimidated is an understatement.

Normally, I would have tried to lead the meeting, show that I had thought about the problem, and signal that I knew what I was talking about. This behavior would have been devastating for progress. As I played this through in my head Tao-style, I had a sense of fatigue wash over me. I felt like this meeting wasn’t winnable for me, given what I knew. So I surrendered. I asked the magic question.

What followed was simply astonishing. The senior engineer proceeded to move to the whiteboard and give me the most detailed rundown of one of the hardest known problems in Digital Marketing: how to attribute credit from sales back to paid media events. 勞

As he proceeded to give me his insights, he just helped me see so many new angles and powerful opportunities. Without the magic question I would have probably shut this floodgate of incredible insight and research for good.

As I became more senior, I started working with a new junior PM on the team. My goal was to ‘work closely’ with him and guide them. They didn’t report into me. This was my test as a potential manager.

And boy did I initially fail. 

I felt so much pressure to say the right thing, so much impatience to get this person to see things the way I saw them, I totally took the air out of every meeting we had. What I hid well was how devastated I was after some of these meeting. It wasn’t hard to self diagnose that I sucked. What wasn’t as easy is to find a path forward.

Through the incredible help of my mentors and friends I learned how to be a better coach and manager, and this is where I learned the second magic sentence:

#2: What is on your mind?

This sentence changed everything. The second I started to learn how to listen, it was a massive game changer for me, for everyone working with me, and for the progress we could make as a team. This is key, since scaling for a PM is hard, and one way is to lean on others to help you deliver on a product vision.

This change had lasting effects on my relationship with the person. I was so happy, it is hard to describe. Where there was anxiety, there was now true partnership. I am sure I experienced growth mindset before, but I have a hard time when it was more profound for me than this time. When he left our team to move on to do bigger and better things, we had leaving drinks, talked shop about our experiences, and I gave him the biggest hug and told him what an amazing PM he was, and how much I learned from him. An uplifting moment.

As I progressed in my career I learned to work with various team cultures, various bosses, various leadership styles and structures. I feel incredibly blessed having the opportunity to explore those and learn. Now, more than ever, I am here to observe and learn, first and foremost. Then provide input and support my teams and projects. It isn’t about the goal any more, it is about the journey.

In my current situation, I am mostly dealing with change. Hell, Google had a ton of change only this year. It isn’t always easy to respond to change, let alone lead others through change. But leading through change is in many ways at the core of Product Management.

Recently we had a member of our team lead a product review. The review came after there was strong feedback expressed by a group in our org, and it was directed squarely at us. We worked hard to analyze the parts of the feedback we could act on, and tried to really emphasize with the group. But a certain feeling of hostility remained. I was nervous when entering the review, since I was the lead PM but had a PM on my team lead this.

But then she wowed me. She said the magic line:

#3: I am right there with you.

This line was so disarming, so empathetic, it felt like words became a hug right there in front of me. They really embodied what it takes to ‘bring people together’, and look at the problem from the same side of the table. It was incredible learning for me.

The review went great. As my team member said these words I could see eyes light up around the room and on the screens. People must have been anxious as well, wondering where this might go. They were visibly relieved that we managed to deescalate the situation, and build alignment and trust – something critical to make progress. It was a moment where I was truly proud of the team members and the team overall. Well done!

Expressing that we know things are a shared struggle can really prepare a much more fertile ground for conversation and exchange. Ultimately, PMs are merely change agents and facilitators. We aren’t the ones coding things up. We aren’t actually building things. The team is. We are here to make sure we facilitate a good exchange between team members so they feel empowered and enabled to address a big user problem.

What was your ‘magic moment’ as a PM? Tell me, I am so curious.

Take Action 🎬

📅 Book a private coaching session with me to grow your PM career. I will share my 15+ years of experience as a Product Manager, all my learning and pitfalls, with actionable tips and concrete lessons to model after.

📚 This is the ‘trust bible’ for business leaders, where Stephen M. R. Covey has built a framework on how to create, restore, and grow trust in teams and organizations. The Speed of Trust, is widely recognized as a landmark work in how leaders help drive success int heir businesses.

📚 A book which helped me is Dale Carnegie’s classic How to win friends and influence people. It truly changed me to my core, helped me build more meaningful relationships with others, inside and outside of work. It also helped me see how to become more humble as a person, something which had tremendously positive effects on my life and opened me up to learn a lot more.

📚 To learn the foundations of Product Management, I recommend reading INSPIRED by Marty Cagan. Marty has been leading the Silicon Valley Product Group for over two decades. His work is foundational for Tech Product Managers – a must read.

📚 The book How to Talk to Anyone helped me build trust with individuals quickly when I needed to. It is a bit of a ‘guide to sure fire icebreakers’, applicable in any situation. Trust is the number one path to more objective information, especially so when the odds are stacked against you.

📚 The Coaching Habit, by Michael Stanier, is a practical guide to help managers learn how to become better coaches. The principles can be easily embedded in the day-to-day work, without feeling overwhelming.

📚 The Harvard Business Review Manager Handbook is an incredibly powerful ‘getting started guide’ for the modern manager. It covers a wide variety of topics, including how to build rapport with teams, how to create highly functioning teams, and how to lead teams.

📚 To learn about the growth mindset, read Mindset, by Carol Dweck. The book is a foundational shift in how we perceive the development of motivation, and skills. It provides practical approaches you can apply every day with your team to increase their performance.