"The Tom Hanks Rule"!
One reason why most people today are fascinated towards product management is because of their notions - autonomy over decisions and keeping away from managing people. The reality is it's bittersweet!
Evolution
Product Management is believed to be coined in the 1930s by Neil H. Mc Elroy at P&G which started out with a justification for the need to hire more people which then branched into brand management and then evolved to what is today’s product management.
But, for reasons best known to the world, the interest in product management has grown manifold more so over the past 3-4 years. Here is a basic keyword interest graph showing how the interest has spanned out for a period of the last 5 years.
And, according to the most popular B-schools of the world who actually curate specific courses for people who would want to upskill themselves in this domain, the interest level has hit a high of 287% (YoY) in the year 2021.
The Understanding…
The reasons why most people today are fascinated towards product management is because their notion is broadly based on these lines:
having a high degree of control
a complete autonomy in and over decisions they will have to make
not having anything to do over managing people & tasks
not having to deliver snippets of code over regular iterations
having to work only on the strategic side of things
Well, some of these points above may even be true to some extent in a few non-product organizations, but broadly in product led organizations that isn’t the way it works.
As of today, I have come across people largely with 3 different notions about Product Management & how people management fits in and this is how they can be bucketed into groups.
1. DISJOINT
Most people perceive the relationship to be something like this.
They think product management has only to do with management over the product side of things encompassing all stages right from Ideation, Build, Release & Growth / Scaling. And, they perceive people management to be completely alienated from their workflow and some also go by the understanding that it falls within the purview of the Delivery manager / the old-fashioned project manager.
2. OVERLAPPING
There is a second set of people whose thinking is represented this way.
Mostly those who may have had a past in people management and have transitioned into the product side of things are the ones who believe in this paradigm. They go by the thinking that product management and people management are totally different with a faint overlap which is to say the manner in which a PM would need to work with those internal stakeholders / managers.
3. ENCOMPASSING / INSCRIBED
The remaining set of people think that product management encompasses people management going by this representation.
The ones who fit into this sample space think that people management / managers who mostly are taking care of tasks, deadlines, in the purview of projects, releases are a sub-function of product management and also think that they report into PMs.
The Reality
But, in reality the healthiest relationship between these 2 essential entities of an organization ought to be represented like this.
Product management is to do with strategizing, planning, directing the other teams within the organization to build a shared understanding and align over that. So, going by that one primary skill / trait PMs should possess is “to deal with people, situations and manage them all efficiently”. So, a PM would be required to do much more than actually managing people. He will have to effectively share his thought process and onboard all other teams & their members over and onto his vision.
So, the skills a PM would have to possess really goes beyond just managing people at a superfluous level because he isn’t dealing with just tasks / deliverables. He will have to subconsciously engage, understand, learn about people he is working with and use that understanding over influencing them at each and every step they take.
And, that is truly challenging.
Emotional Side - The Bitter Truth!
Post a day’s work more often than not it could feel very taxing on the mental side of things for a product manager as he would have to deal with a lot of emotions from a lot of people he works with right from:
leadership / EXECs
his immediate team members
internal stakeholders
other team members
PMs reporting into him if he is a senior PM / product leader
external stakeholders
third-party organizations who act as key partners required to deliver over the value chain
(and finally, not to mention) the users / user groups
So, the job could feel like a new challenge spanning over something new every day. But, having said that the satisfaction one would get by doing all of these things well and doing it right is truly unmatchable.
Here are a few things I highly recommend you should do as a PM before and as you are walking into work in the morning and getting into that hot seat:
Underrated Skill(s)
And through my experience over the years whilst interviewing, hiring, mentoring, managing many great PMs, I can more than vouch for these being the most underrated skills:
1. Declining gracefully and saying “NO” (so called “Tom Hanks Rule”)
2. Assertive approach to situations
1. Tom Hanks Rule - Just say “NO”
“Every time you say ‘YES’ to those things you don’t want to do, remember that you are inherently saying ‘NO’ to the things you want to do.”
- Tom Hanks
It shouldn’t be difficult to say “NO” to something that we don’t want to do or is not in our interest over say alignment with our current job / role. But yet, we mostly struggle at it because we sometimes feel pleasing people is the right way to go about things / we just want to be nice. And the next thing, we are found juggling 2-3 completely different tasks altogether at the same time and we are setting everything up for mega-failure and pushing ourselves towards fatigue and an unhealthy life.
So, the next time someone hits you up with a task that doesn’t add any value whatsoever, learn to gracefully decline and say “NO”.
2. Assertive approach to situations
One would mostly find people using either one of these 3 approaches.
LOWER Extreme (PASSIVE)
On the lower extreme, I’ve seen passive / submissive behavior mostly from my junior peers and team members, or when they have to work with a really tough manager. Supposing some task is thrown their way, or someone pops a request that would require them to go way beyond the purview of their regular work to incorporate it and cater to it, they just reverentially accept it with grace and stretch their working hours too if need be.
HIGHER Extreme (AGGRESSIVE)
And then on the other extreme there is another class of people who meet any request basic to complicated, small to large with utmost aggression shrugging it off, almost repelling it by storming their way through a highly chosen and selective vocabulary which reeks of profligacy. And, what’s more, when that behavior may largely be considered questionable and impertinent in the corporate world it could lead to a high degree of imbalance at a professional level it also could be the chief reason for all discord.
The Balance – Walking a Fine Line (ASSERTIVE)
When most people may feel thoroughly justified in choosing one of the previous 2 behavioral extremes as they think it may be required over situations & when dealing with some people, it is the ones who practice assertiveness very closely that often seem to win the battle. It could also be the best approach in dealing with any sort of situation that is largely connected to work & collaborating with people / teams in the workplace.
Assertiveness is a worthy asset and a true relation-builder and that could be worth its weight in gold for any aspiring / budding product manager(s).
Remember, as a PM would you have to be the glue that binds all internal teams and gets them to function harmoniously as much as also you have the external counterparts – the users, the target market(s) & the collaborators / the partners to think about.