Lenny Rachitsky: uncertainty

Transcript context

…I didn't. I consider him one of the most interesting people in the world too. You guys are so kind to each other. I wanted to start with this trend I've been noticing in product management and the perception of product management. It feels like, I don't know if this is new or if it's always been around, but it feels like there's this trend of people just not liking product managers. There's trend of founders feeling like they should wait a long time to hire their first product manager. There's a lot of teams that wish they didn't have a product manager in their team. We don't have this person telling us what to do. I'm curious just why you think there's often this dislike of product managers. And then for PMs listening, do you have any advice for just how to not become a product manager people don't like and don't want on their team? I think most people don't like product managers often because they haven't experienced good product managers. The core of product management is competency-based, meaning there is someone in an organization that represents the customer the best, that has a deep knowledge of the customers and your users, that has a deep knowledge of your data, your industry, your business and the product itself. And because of this competence, you kind of trust them to make decisions because if you have a problem that says, say we want more customers, it makes a lot of sense to go to the person that is an expert in customers to say, "Help me solve this problem." What you see happening in many organizations is that there is kind of this misperception displaced influence and mistrust because of the poor competency, meaning I feel I know more about the business or I know more about the customer or the data. And so why should I not tell you what to do? And I think people fail to understand that this role is, it's a team spot. They are part of a team of people working together to discover a solution we're building and in a way that works for our company. And so I think when I think through the companies I've worked with, where I see this discipline really eroded is where there is just not a competent level of product management. The way I describe it to a CEO, I'll ask him, "Tell me who you trust in your company to make a decision on what markets we go to, what things we do." And they always have some senior leader, some VP, some person. And I say, "Why? Oh, Bob has been here a long time. He knows everybody. Everybody loves him and trusts him. He understands our business." And I often say to him, I say, "Well, Bob said put up manager." And it's often interesting to executives when I try to explain that way. I say that's the competent level that we're talking about here. Imagine if you had Bob's on every team. Imagine how much you can accomplish. So one, I don't really think it's... I often say it's not the hate for product management, it's a hate for the understanding of what they have experienced in product management, which are people that are not able to deliver results that help them meet the outcomes they want. So if I were advising product managers, I often say, look, when we see sales or executive driven product management where we see these alternatives to product management, it's not a cultural knock or a leadership knock, it's really on the individual and the discipline has to elevate itself to a place that it earns the right to make a decision on what we do.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.