Pet hates of Product Managers
As much as product management is coveted there seems to be ample reason for someone to hate it just as much & here are few top reasons for that dislike & a few workarounds to overcome them…
There’s no doubt that product management has been a hot topic that only seems to have picked up exponentially in the last 2-3 years. Here’s a view of a Google Trends for the keyword “product management” over a 10-year period which shows a whopping 200+% increase, although recent times have shown a minor dip as well, blame it on the layoffs mostly that set off a bit of an unrest also contributed largely by the disruption induced by Tech (Gen-AI).
But not all of that is as rosy as it seems on the outset.
When it is very possible that PMs could end up hating some portion of their jobs over having to cope with some parts of their workflow, that could be ephemeral in most cases. And the ones who have supposedly had their backs to the wall & have managed to stick it in & survive there for even half a decade know that the hatred (although that’s a pretty strong word) has nothing to do with the plainly the job & in its entirety.
Let’s tear into some facts & data now.
And just like PMs do, I hit it off with research to find supporting facts.
Apart from going over reddit & wading through some popular opinions to help reach a consensus, I happened to pop that very question asking product people to enlist the “things they hate” & the responses I received were pretty eclectic. Some early entrants & aspirants spoke about the neck-to-neck & stiff competition hampering the chances of finding jobs, when the lack of autonomy owing to leaders choosing to micromanage seemed quite a popular choice.
Here’s a visualization of the TOP reasons why PMs seem to dislike their jobs.
Let’s get down in the dirt & explore each of these reasons in depth, of course with causations & workarounds / solutions so as to steer clear of the situation or wade through that state of chaos in descending order, so biggest chunk first.
1. Managing Expectations
Owing to the nature of the role its only but natural for it to carry expectations from each of those individual stakeholders / teams, not to forget the interface with the higher-ups like leadership, EXECs, C-suite which is one of the reasons it is fraught with daunting complexity.
Lets’ do the MATH.
Say 1 stakeholder breaks down 1 such outcome into a strategic initiative translating it into 5 EPICs on the roadmap further breaking it down into 5 user stories each over the backlog.
So, that may come down to:
5 EPICs x 5 user stories = 25 deliverables
Multiply that across each stakeholder assuming similar workload (which ideally is never to be):
25 deliverables x 6 stakeholders = 150 expectations
On an average a PM ought to be able to plan, prioritize & manage 150 expectations at a very basic level.
Here are a few steps that could help:
1. Start by communicating & emphasizing on the goal & clearly spelling out the outcome(s)
2. Build clarity over the goal by convening meetings with all stakeholders to get a shared understanding & further ensure alignment
3. Brainstorm over the strategy to build consensus & chart out a roadmap
4. Explore opportunities & refine the EPICs on the roadmap building more granular clarity over the outputs as required for teams overseeing the understanding cascade into & shaping up those user stories
5. Ensure frictionless collaboration between stakeholders & the teams at all times by volunteering to be in one of their internal meetings if need be with a willingness to clear out blockers (if any)
6. Touch base with stakeholders & oversee release plans, timelines ensuring they are stacked properly & lined up with expectations of the users in the market
7. If you deal with external stakeholders representing the users, ensure you are in touch with them over the progress periodically (although not as regular as you would do with internal teams)
2. Work Life Balance
As it may seem, there could be no respite for a young PM as they may find themselves at a whirlwind of sorts perhaps juggling a lot on one plate owing to the number of touchpoints & mammoth expectations the job brings with it (as described over the previous point). If one goes into granularity here, one would learn that it is not the complexity of the job as much as it is to do with the enormity of it.
Having said that, for a seasoned PM it could be draining owing to how it seems like they are always wanted everywhere & in-demand. Conflicting meeting slots emphasizing the strict adherence to calendars (& sometimes multiple reminders too – FYI, that’s how I manage to scrape by) with someone wanting to take up that meeting, a quick response expected over e-mail, team members awaiting some clarification & direction with all of them bearing an “URGENT / IMMEDIATE” tag subjecting one’s prioritization skills & focus to constant tests.
But there’s always a method to all that madness & here’s how you could bail yourself out & find the right work-life-balance:
1. Emphasize on building a shared understanding & take a measure of the deliverables always
2. Develop that brand of thinking which enables you to see 2 steps ahead from where teams are operating right now
3. Apply forethought to envision the blockers setting them on the table whilst subjecting them to a brand of cross-questioning to see if the contingencies & the extent to which they are covered
4. Pin on innovation & push teams towards developing a proactive mindset shunning away from reactive approach
5. Delegate & delegate at the first break
3. Lack of Autonomy
The interface PMs have with management is limited to those 1:1 strategy discussions & getting the download over those goals & business objectives, statutory reporting of progress at a regular cadence & also to get buy-in from the relevant touchpoints, which is natural about any workflow. But apparently at a few places the management chooses to break the code & get down the aisle questioning every move over the workflow of each ICs (individual contributors).
Keeping them all happy & at all times starts off being an add-on task & seems to swell to take center-stage eventually. And that is pretty dangerous for everyone involved. A good PM (or for that matter any other person in any role) would never appreciate that. Total lack of power at the PM level & over their workflow combined with too many granular instructions spelling out each directive word-to-word leaving no room for strategizing / playing the visionary whatsoever & being thrust into a few tangential responsibilities may result in a feature factory.
So, here’s how you can overcome that if you ever get yourself caught in such a whirlpool:
1. Start off by understanding the goals & the motivations of your managers / leaders first
2. Be more goal-oriented which could mean circling back to questioning “the purpose” every time something is tossed at you following that up with meaningful questions so as to divulge the real intent & emotions
3. Be empathetic to every stakeholder, team member alike & crisp / laser-sharp to the leadership
4. Communicate crisply, concisely & always draw focus over creating impact leaving a lasting impression
5. Keep a keen eye on learning from yours & the others mistakes as well, building a personal handbook if need be updating it at a regular cadence
6. Delegate as much as possible & involve the relevant teams & members in all important meetings / discussions so as to set & lead by example
7. Proactively follow-up tasks, deliverables, outputs & shoot those reports to your managers or skip-level managers as required, so as to build & more importantly convey your ability to shoulder initiatives & take ownership
4. Politics
Talking of product management, it is believed to be a crossover between fine art & pure hardcore science, which simply means that people who willingly accept & take up these jobs are deeply passionate about it & would never complain if they were allowed to just operate all by themselves without needing them to get their foot stuck into workplace politics.
And history stands testimony to the fact that PMs do find themselves on the wrong side of politics which could also end up stripping them away from that deep product work that they closely correlate to & pushing them more towards people management, task management & what governs project management.
“As much as workplace politics could get nasty at times, one needs to perceive it as a hot ball of fire, when it is tossed at you there’s no way you’re going to keep holding on to that for long, you got to toss it around ASAP”
Here are a few workarounds to help you tackle workplace politics:
1. Get to the board & spend time over understanding the hierarchy chart, who reports to whom, who has a say in what et. al.
2. Scope the major locus of control & get a hang of the power drift between the hierarchy reaching unto your level & all the way lower
3. Focus on building relationships & ensure that you put in an extra bout of an effort to go beyond your current teams getting to those who actively contribute across the value chain
4. Work towards improving your people skills like communication, empathy, patience, listening, logical reasoning, out of the box thinking, conflict resolution, adopting Pareto principle (80-20 rule)
5. Work on your intercession skills & never take sides in battles that don’t concern you, where you don’t belong, rather be tied to the ultimate purpose using a brand of reasoning to influence
5. Know-it-all Syndrome
PMs are the ones who take the goals, convert them to and drive those outcomes on a regular basis and in doing so they usually are supposed to talk to various stakeholders or team members onboarding them onto a certain thought process or a common term thrown around far too often – “thought leadership”.
In influencing, it is quite a possibility that PMs use a brand of language or diction that could come across as quite authoritarian / dictated making it look like they sort of know it all. And usually when that happens to be the impression teams have towards a PM, it ought to be addressed immediately sans which things could reach a point of no return.
Here’s how you could avoid falling into that trap:
1. Start by building good relationships with people around you, externally & internally as that’s often going to be the decider of how you’re going to be received
2. Ask the right set of questions & double down laddering your way in through some more follow-up questions so as to understand why someone is holding a tight rope over a task / output / deliverable & attempt to build an understanding of the working styles / patterns
3. Use a brand of impactful & enterprising communication, clearly articulating value & making it more actionable for everyone involved, also tone it down to your audience as much as possible
4. Be empathetic not only towards your immediate touchpoints but also towards the other team members, offer to help & unblock them whenever they feel stuck
5. Simplify things for people as much as you can, practice & gain some mastery over ELI5 (explain it to me like I was 5) as nobody would have the patience to read tons of text or hear long stories when they are stuck & looking for an immediate bail out
6. Decision Fatigue
One of the main reasons contributing to all the chaos & confusion earlier on over a PM’s career is how they are supposed to be making all decisions & it could surely feel like a total drag when everyone else is looking up to you as a PM & you seem to be lost for direction yourself. That’s the state of “decision fatigue” & most of us have gone through earlier on in our careers.
Sometimes it is the exigence over reaching those outcomes that gets a PM all stressed out thwarting the opportunity of taking it slow, to be thinking straight when other times it could be about having to make decisions with minimal (or NO) data then forcing one to rely on hunches or some vague assumptions if not taking the BIAS as a bait swallowing it hook line & sinker.
The way out of the decision fatigue could be down to these steps:
1. Understand the end goal & chart out strategies covering contingencies over a good breadth to get there
2. Apply acute product sense to eliminate the tangential routes sticking to the ones targeting the core so as to resonate with the target markets’ / user groups’ underserved needs
3. Enumerate & enlist the data requirements subjecting it further to sufficiency tests covering as many edge cases as possible
4. Chart out action plans collaborating with stakeholders to get downloads from proprietary touchpoints & delegate suitably
5. In case of non-availability of data from a secondary research channel, explore the feasibility of conducting primary market research weighing out the cost & the time on hand
6. Spearhead & ensure all teams are making decisions pinning on right data points as it is better to curb an initiative down putting a temporary halt to it than to proceed by taking blind bets
7. Multi-faceted Role
A PM has an interface with every internal team present in an organization. It’s only but natural for the job to seem like a multidimensional battle between time, initiatives, strategy, user requests, priorities, budgets, goals & it is NEVER a one-off affair as it does happen on a regular basis in most cases.
Here’s your method to all that madness:
1. Use the understanding of the goals, outcomes & strategy converting them into a workable action plan for all stakeholders involved
2. Empower stakeholders & teams by convening meetings to hand them the download, recheck whether they have an understanding of their expectations, outputs, calling out each of those KPIs, metrics so as to unambiguously point to success
3. Delegate & ensure you do more of that & oversee / handhold if required but never get down to micromanaging
8. Competition
Not only is a PM’s job a boiling pot, so is the job market as well which has been heating up tremendously only substantiated by the interest levels as shared at the beginning of this article (+200% increase in interest levels). The dynamic nature of the role, the locus of control operating at the epicenter of business taking ownership for all strategic decisions only make it tough to bag on of them & grow over a longer period of time.
If beating the heat of the competition & staying ahead in the race happens to be your endeavor here are a few must dos:
1. Believe in planning 2 steps ahead & make some really wise & well thought-out career choices
2. Keep a sharp lookout on developments over the product world & always focus on learning, stay in touch with a community, interact, contribute & learn (yes, there will be instances where you’ll be pulled down for no reason, learn to move ahead, chin-up)
3. Make reading a mandatory habit & stay in touch with latest happenings around the world so as to build a knowledge base keeping yourself well informed
4. Get a good mentor as they can use their experience & farsightedness to help you with clear & concise plans to reach your goal, saving you’re a lot of time, money & effort eventually