This post was part of a series of old blogs i have created in the past. i moved them here (as well as tidying up some details) in order to preserve all of my writings in one place for easy reference. Hope you find this one a good read. Enjoy!
Product Manager is a strange role.
On one hand, they have a huge responsibility, to oversee a product’s development from start (often from ideation stage) all the way to distribution. In order to effectively coordinate the effort of the organisation, they need to know the product inside and out, though not necessarily involved in the actual engineering or manufacturing process. And finally, who is ultimately responsible for the success of the product? You guessed it. No wonder then why people sometimes nicknamed Product Managers as “Mini CEOs”.
Yet, despite all of that responsibilities, Product Managers in reality do not have any real authority (except in some cases where they have a team of staff working under them). They have to rely on their own communication skill, persuasion and negotiation skill to get different departments and stakeholders to move in one direction, towards building a great product. It’s like being given a task to dig up a pit, but instead of a shovel, you are told to use a spoon. Sure it’s doable, but it’s sure is far easier if you got the shovel.
But that’s exactly where the challenge and the art is. Just about anyone with a title can give orders, but if you strip the authority, what are you left with? You are left with who that person exactly is.
People’s perception of you comes in multiple layers. For example, there’s the culture layer: how people see you based on the norms in certain groups. There’s the hierarchy layer: how people see you based on your actual position in the organisation. The list could go on, but at the most bottom layer, is the personality layer: how people see you based on your actual character, what kind of person they think you are (more on this later). When you lose a title, it’s as if a layer has been peeled off of you. People can now ‘see’ you in a different light. If you always behaved like a jerk, making the lives of people around you miserable, i’d bet you would find that suddenly people don’t show as much respect to you as before. The same can’t be said for those who exhibit good and positive behaviours, though. For those people, losing a title apparently don’t have any major effect apart from the obvious shift in terms of organisational responsibilities. People still respect them and in some cases even still listen to anything they say.
And that’s exactly what’s needed to be a good PM. Just about anyone with a title can give orders, but to command genuine influence towards people, what kind of quality is that? That is, in my opinion what true leadership is.
The role of PM comes with a great challenge. How exactly do we make people go to certain direction or do certain things using nothing but pure leadership. And if you thought to yourself, “well that shouldn’t be too hard, i just need to be clear and decisive with my instructions” you need to think again. If there’s one indisputable truth we can learn from the pandemic we’re currently in, is that people are notoriously bad at following instructions. And we don’t even have to look too far anyway. Just observe your co-workers, the friends you hang out with, your children, your parents, or even perhaps… yourself? When’s the last time you disobeyed a simple rule or instruction because you thought the rule was silly or you have your own reasons? I thought so.
Still here? Good.
If you are up for the challenge, i have good news for you. Yes, the challenge for being a PM is great but it’s not impossible. There are actually other sources of influence beyond organisational titles or authority. These are the things that great leaders know and utilise to be so effective in influencing other people, irrespective of their formal position.
Leadership is all about influence, and to have influence, we need to earn trust. When it comes to deciding whether to trust someone or in other words whether to submit under one’s influence, there are a few basic questions that people ask themselves either consciously or not. And these questions are the key through which you can develop and hone your influence. Those questions are:
Who are you? Like i mentioned before, at the most fundamental level, people need to have a sense of who you are before they decide how they will engage with you. There’s one common method to do that: they will observe you. Yes, they will watch your every move, and they will watch everything from simple things like whether you greet people in the morning, whether you took the last doughnut in the pantry (it’s a bit silly, but that’s topic for another day) to other not so simple things like how you treat people, whether you keep your promises, how you react under pressure and so on.
What do you have? It’s sad in a way, but we still judge each other based on whether that person has something that could benefit us. But right now, i’m not talking about morality or altruism. It is what it is, and the point is how we can navigate through that to achieve our goals, right? Well, to navigate it, first we need to be clear about what it means. Although sometimes it can mean people want to know how much financial resource you have (in which case i strongly suggest you to run as far as you can from them), most of the time it just means people want to know whether you have the capability to help them in times of need. So the ‘resource’ that you need to have has a very broad definition. Teaching a colleague how to make a formula work in a spreadsheet, introducing a friend to your network for a new opportunity, sharing advice or life tips, or even giving a ride home to someone, all can be neatly categorised under ‘something you have’.
What do you do to me? At the end of the day, no matter how saintly your public perception is, no matter how resourceful or helpful you are, if i don’t personally experience that, don’t expect much cooperation from me. It all comes down to action. People are more easily swayed by action than words, especially if they witness the action or experience the action first hand. That’s why you always see politicians campaigning directly to their constituents, shaking hands, kissing babies, and host dialogues. Doesn’t necessarily mean those actions were effective, but at least the constituents experienced it and that’s enough to earn their support. It’s not enough to ‘broadcast’ who you are and what you have, you need to also ‘deliver’ that experience to them. To use product management lingo, before working on great products, PMs need to first be the product.
The first question prompts you to build your character, what are your core beliefs as a human, how do you perceive the things happening around you? the second question prompts you to build your capacity, what are the things you can contribute or add-value to other people? and the third question prompts you to take action instead of wasting your time in ideologies and abstract strategies.
And that’s it, 3 simple questions people ask before deciding whether to trust you or not. Answer those questions well, and you are on your way to become a great PM. It’s really as simple as that.
That was the good news. I’ll close with the bad news:
Those are not questions that you can answer easily like flipping the palm of your hand. It takes time, effort, and often sacrifices to build the reputation, resources, and readiness to deliver the answers to people. So my fourth and final question for this post is: Are you up for it?