How to avoid a hustle culture 🌪️

The role of a Product Managers has come characteristics which make it prone to a ‘hustle culture’:

• They are meant to ‘backfill’ missing x-functional roles. No project manager? Who cares, the PM will do the tracker. No UX designer? Well, bad luck, you got to deal with my Figma skills now. No UX Research team? Don’t you worry, I interview them customers.
  
• They are biased toward action. I have never met a group that is so impatient, yet so proud of it. They are driving driving driving. Nothing is fast enough, nothing isn’t evaluated for squeezing out a little more juice.
  
• They are accountable for outcomes, not effort. There is a lie out there: that if you do a ‘good job’, you ‘meet expectations’. Nothing could be further from the truth. PMs are out there to do the thing that no one though possible, until it was done. This requires to push through unbelievable obstacles.
  
• They are just oh-so optimistic … All.The.Time. I am a bit of a contrarian, and once at a PM gathering I found myself surrounded by highly optimistic folks, and all I did was to find reasons why this wouldn’t work, why this is too risky, or that is too hard. I realized that I needed to calibrate my contrarian-ism, since PMs thrive in a world where we ignore the limits until they are no more. Like a quantum leap: you don’t quite know when it happened, but the particle shows up ‘on the other side’. The think did eventually get launched, no recollection how (well, because of the amazing PM, of course ;).

So, the just question might be asked, is this healthy? Does this culture or attitude work all the time? What makes it a useful tool? what boundaries might we apply? How might we create incentives which help us ‘steer’ these aspects of our role? Here it goes.

Staffing 🙏

Ok, so the first one is simple: staff your teams! A PM will say that they had an amazing time writing the HC article because they have to (see the point about optimism). but they would really love to ‘manage’ that work, more than doing it themselves. Also, they are decent at it, at best, but the experts are amazing at it. Same with research, design project management. If you find yourself in a situation where your team isn’t staffed, make it safe for folks to speak up. Normalize staffing discussions where PMs can speak to what is missing from their ‘ideal setup’.

Give time to dwell on data 📑

Action is super cool, it is invigorating, it is uplifting. But it is also where the risk is. If we do it, we spend resources on it. If we think about it, we spend less expensive resources on it. That is key. A PM distributes resources. Let’s make sure there is an incentive for good data and good storytelling. Raise the bar for reviews. Develop principles by which PMs can develop strong proposals. Work by ‘user value’, and avoid working ‘by relationship’. it is great that you like the director orVP from that other team. But if that makes a weak proposal get prioritized, it is still going to be a weak feature. Air on the side of competence over motivation (meaning: make sure the content of a proposal is the most important part, not the sales pitch), since it has been found this is what makes for stronger teams.

Define outcomes in context of learning 🦉

If outcomes are # of launches, this is what you are going to get. If outcomes are #of features, this is what you will get. It outcomes is a new product, this is what you will get. Allow a phase where outcomes are defined as ‘new data’, ‘clarity’, finding out what the biggest problem is. It will cost you. There is a runway that is needed. But I guarantee you, where you will put your money will be that much better. Incentivize learnings through rapid experimentation and testing. Make ‘finding out’ repeatable, and cheap. Make it part of your culture. doing experiments, and learning what doesn’t work is great outcome.

Debate the $hit out of it 💩

Allow for a structured way to debate things. Make sure you hold yourself and others to a high bar. Don’t be an ass while you do it. Respect the efforts people put in, tell them politely if you feel things need more refinement, or there are obvious questions which seem to not have been asked. Delegate this, allow people to grow and learn. Demand respect by giving it. It is the best way to make folks see that optimism can’t replace solid product discovery and reasoning. So don’t pretend it can, never, and make this clear from every level of the org.

Take Action 🎬

📅 If you ever have any questions, feel free to book time with me for a quick PM consultation session.

📚 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.

📚 For better decision making, and understanding the context of how crucial decision often happen, I recommend reading Crucial Conversations, by Joseph Grenny. A Book truly transformative in nature. It will allow you to become a better negotiator, manager, and team member. it will also propel your effectiveness in difficult conversations.