A great product manager taking the time is all that is required for great product work.
Objection: Starting with product strategy sounds great, but I can’t do great product work—they won’t let me.
Timeless viewpoint: The only thing needed for great product work is a great product manager taking the time.
The timeless way is simple but always challenging. It involves forming a strategy, crafting a product vision, and guiding it through product development while supporting market and customer development. The easy way is to follow the current and focus on incoming tasks and the next meeting.
As product leaders, we create our outcomes, whether great work or absence. It’s us.
I’m reminded of Steve Jobs’s anecdote: “When you’re the janitor, reasons matter,” Jobs told VPs upon promotion. “[…and] somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.”1
It’s not on the C-Suite, our peers, partners, or our team if we can’t do “great work.” A great product manager is all that is needed for great product work.
Making decisions based on an informed perspective doesn’t require permission. It does, however, require standing apart at times. Great work may not always be welcome, but it won’t be denied for long.
Great work is your responsibility, but what about alignment? That also is your accountability. Alignment begins with aligning yourself. What does owning 100% responsibility for the problem look like? Your CEO and peers are responsible for their 100%, but whether or not they meet their accountability is outside your control. Don’t wait to own yours. Embrace it with unyielding enthusiasm.
(How can you tell you’re 100% accountable? If you weren’t, someone else would collect part of your paycheck.)
But great work—developing an informed perspective and vision and shepherding a product against that vision—costs time.
Sometimes, we lack research, insights, or data to get others on board, or if we have them, we haven’t made them clear to others. Life would be easier if this was low friction, but we don’t live in any time but now. And now, you might be facing high friction alignment. It’s still paid for with the same thing: time.
You can even use time to gather data about data. What questions do we need to answer? What is the cost of delay? What is the action plan to get back on track?
Every action costs something; some cost money, but all cost time. Is your time aligned with great product work?
Product management requires deep work, writing, reading, and revising. Your working time comes from your calendar.
What’s on yours? Is it based on your priorities (you do have them, right?)? Is it strategy development, or is it dedicated to putting out fires?
Bring your calendar in alignment with your priorities for the deep work that drives your business, and great work will blossom.
You have the power to lead by example. When you do great product work, you have created an environment for great product work. It is challenging, but great product work costs.
Pay it with your calendar.
Or pay for it in your results.
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