How 2 Keys From A 20-Year Old Book Can Help You Navigate The Product Role, The Highest-Paying Job People Most Want To Quit
Learn the mindset shifts required to survive and thrive in Product
Welcome back to this week’s Upstream Full-Stack Journal, helping you change the future via the full end-to-end value delivery stack, touching on strategy, Product, OKR goal-setting & Continuous Discovery.
Special edition
This final post of the year features a single, longer-form piece drawn from my Product coaching practice.
Our strategy in 2024 is to shift from curation towards more original, long-form articles for subscribers.
Let’s dive in!
Product as a Team Sport
With our product’s pilot kickoff just weeks away, our Product Manager suddenly left with little warning.
In order to support our upcoming launch and ongoing iterative development, I was asked to step in and share the Product role with our Subject Matter Expert (SME) and Business Analyst, both with years of experience in the industry.
Across the three of us, we worked closely to divide and conquer everything from problem identification, through Discovery, Delivery, and collaborating closely with the other Tech and UX leaders on our cross-functional team and across the organization.
For months, our product team showed up every day, ready to collaborate and move the product forward through successive pilot rollouts across the country.
Enter the former CEO
Finally, a dynamic startup CEO was brought in to take over the role, and our product team transitioned the role to them, and we went back to our other roles on the team.
But several months later, the former startup CEO still wasn’t able to achieve the same levels of alignment and collaboration, and leadership asked our SME to take over the Product role.
I started coaching the SME in Product, Discovery, & Delivery. After a rocky start, we not only became great friends, but they rapidly grew into the role, thriving in leading both the team and the product, eventually becoming a standout senior Product leader in their own right over the next couple of years.
The takeaway for me?
Effective Product Management requires skills, experience, and the support of the entire team to succeed.
The Product Nerd Niche
I’ve been involved in Product as a personal and professional passion for the past 10 years, since leading the mobile team at Weight Watchers. Marty Cagan came in at that time to upskill their Product Managers and distribute copies of his book “INSPIRED” to everyone. I still have my copy.
Over that time, I’ve seen Product go from relatively unknown to linchpin role in the flow from strategy to delivery across many organizations.
Some companies introduce Product Management (or Product “Ownership”) as part of an Agile Transformation.
In others, as part of a Product Transformation.
But when done “right,” the Product role can include so many responsibilities, it quickly overwhelms most new people who take the job.
The endless list of Product’s accountabilities
John Cutler insightfully laid out no less than 20 things Product Managers are expected to be responsible for in this post, and it’s a staggering list.
From shielding their team from requests and interruptions, to managing stakeholders, to maximizing the ROI of team efforts, to figuring out how to hit specific business goals, the Product person is expected to handle it all.
Clearly, it would seem to be almost impossible for one person to manage all this and be effective.
Disconnects in what “Product” means
Worse, many passionate, hard-working Product Managers find themselves working under leaders that may have a completely different understanding of what the Product role entails.
This can lead to devaluing the practice of Product Management and the PM’s contributions, leading to over-work, burnout, and attrition.
Product Management Hits the Headlines – For the Wrong Reason
Nowhere was this more apparent in a recent story from CNBC specifically calling out the Senior Product Manager role:
These are the top 15 jobs people most want to quit—No. 1 pays $144,000 a year
So the role to which most Product Managers aspire is the highest-paying and most-hated job.
Ouch.
Enter the Responsibility Virus
In my years of taking the role and coaching others to success, I’ve seen promise in some mental models and mindset shifts to address the traditional Product challenges.
One of the most insightful takes on accountability, responsibility, and burnout, Roger L. Martin’s first book, “The Responsibility Virus,” offers helpful ways to understand and address the issues.
It’s been transformative for me in learning how to recognize and combat the title’s widespread and destructive phenomenon.
What is “The Responsibility Virus”?
The Responsibility Virus happens when we take one of two unhelpful mindsets in regard to any area:
“I’m fully in control, and you’re not” (“Over”–responsible)
Or:
“You’re fully in control, and I’m not” (“Under”–responsible)
When anyone is stuck in either over– or under–responsibility, there are always downstream impacts:
Collaboration becomes impossible
The over–responsible person risks overwhelm and burnout
Sound familiar?
Product Managers typically either take on, or are given over–responsibility, which has most likely contributed to our headline-grabbing statistic.
When Product Managers are asked to simply project-manage the delivery of long lists of features in a “Feature Factory,” they are firmly stuck in under-responsibility.
Product Management means making choices
One of Martin’s core foundations in “The Responsibility Virus” is that effective choice-making is a skill.
A skill that either improves with practice, or gets worse when it’s not regularly exercised.
Given that the Product Role is the key strategic role on the team, it’s no coincidence that making choices is fundamental to designing strategy.
Being effective in Product therefore requires the ability to consistently improve the skill of choice-making itself, in ever-increasing levels of responsibility and collaboration.
These choices extend from the ability to design an effective Personal Strategy in maximizing the effectiveness of each hour worked, to the choices that “nest” Product Strategy to align to higher-level company strategy.
But many Product people are stuck solidly in “order-taker” mode, reduced to “managing” feature delivery.
And with each successfully delivered feature, these Product Managers stuck in “waiter” mode will gradually see their choice-making skills atrophy.
Protecting Ourselves Against the Responsibility Virus:
So what can we do when we find ourselves stuck with the “The Responsibility Virus”?
There are two powerful tools we can immediately start using:
#1: The Frame Experiment
#2: The Responsibility Ladder
#1: The Frame Experiment
The second of the four transformative tools from “The Responsibility Virus” is “The Frame Experiment.”
“Over-”responsibility frequently occurs when there’s a mismatch between how we believe something should be done, and how someone feels it should be handled. This causes us to lose patience and say, “I’ll just do it.”
This could be a Tech Lead / Architect, or UX Lead, or a Subject Matter Expert, or even a Stakeholder or Sponsor.
When we think about someone who holds a diametrically opposing view in our work, we typically approach the situation like this:
Existing Frame
Our existing frame typically says:
About Myself:
I know the one right answer
About the Other Person:
This person Is either uninformed or ill-intentioned
My Task in this Situation:
I have to get him/her to see things my way
How the Frame Experiment Can Help
In The Frame Experiment, we use curiosity to consciously shift our frame to:
About Myself:
I have a wealth of data and experience, but I may not see or understand everything.
About the Other Person:
He/she may see things that I don't see which may contribute to my understanding.
My Task in this Situation:
Access our collective intelligence in order to make the best choice.
How to use the Frame Experiment
According to Roger L. Martin, instead of forcing immediate and total change, we want to start by using this experiment in a single interaction in a low-stakes situation.
Our only goal is to use curiosity to open the door “a tiny crack” to the possibility of the other person having something of value to contribute.
And notice that we’re not asking the other person to do anything – to change or shift in any way.
We’re only seeking to take ownership of our own frame, and remain open to an alternate perspective.
This can open the door to truly take advantage of our “collective” intelligence to create something greater than either person could have created on their own.
(Roger L. Martin, “The Responsibility Virus,” p. 141)
#2: The Responsibility Ladder
From perceiving others’ “frames,” we’re now ready for the next shift that can radically reimagine how we match tasks to our level of readiness, allowing us to turbocharge our choice-making skills.
The Responsibility Ladder is the third of four tools Martin shares that can protect us from lapsing into over- or under-responsibility.
The ladder’s six responsibility levels offer us a richer set of options to choose from in any situation than just “I’m in control,” or “You’re in control.”
Whether used with leadership, the team, or horizontally with other Product Managers, Product people can expand their choice-making ability.
In this way, they can gradually move from a supported structure, to greater levels of autonomy, independence, and empowerment.
The 6 Levels of the Responsibility Ladder
1. Consider options and make decision, informing other party subsequently
2. Provide options to other party along with own recommendation on choice
3. Generate options for other party and ask other party to make choice
4. Describe a problem to other party and ask for specific help in structuring it
5. Ask other party to solve problem, but make it clear you will watch and learn for next time
6. Drop problem on other party's desk and signal helplessness
“Although Levels 1 through 6 are available to us in virtually all of our joint choice-making situations, unfortunately we take on either Level 1 or Level 6 responsibility in the vast majority of cases.”
(Roger L. Martin, The Responsibility Virus, p. 152)
The Responsibility Ladder in action
With this new range of options, Product Managers can align for the first time with:
1. Their leaders on the responsibility level they’re ready for
2. The rest of the team to negotiate what each may be ready to take on to lighten the weight of the responsibilities on the PM
This, in turn, creates new opportunities for collaboration and growth.
The Responsibility Ladder in the 1:1
The Responsibility Ladder can be a powerful addition to a Product Manager’s regular 1:1 with their manager, leader, or coach.
Using the ladder both forward – discussing how best to approach an upcoming decision, or a new responsibility.
As well as retrospectively – talking through a choice-making situation, and how it could have been handled more effectively to grow the Product Manager’s ability to make better choices.
Through regular use of the Responsibility Ladder, Product Managers can learn to be aware of and manage their responsibility levels both for themselves, as well as across their team, so they’re not left doing everything.
Product Operations
Internationally-renowned Product thought leader Melissa Perri has led the conversation on Product Management and Product Leadership for years after writing “Escaping the Build Trap,” an examination of the importance of both strategy and Product Management in software product delivery.
Recently, Melissa has written another book certain to further revolutionize the Product role, recognizing that Product value, client-centricity, and strategy can be a shared responsibility across more people throughout the company.
To that end, Melissa’s latest book is “Product Operations.” In it, she advocates for a dedicated group that can support Product Managers and their organizations to build and sustain better Products.
This can go a long way to reduce the tsunami of responsibilities that typically afflict the Product person, and finally set them up to succeed.
Takeaways
Most of us in the industry have long been aware of the challenge the Product role represents.
But understanding the existence of the Responsibility Virus, designing a Personal Strategy, and working with the two tools from Roger L. Martin’s “Responsibility Virus”:
The Frame Experiment – to understand and be open to other perspectives
The Responsibility Ladder – to baseline where we are, and decide collaboratively where we’ll play
Together with standing up a Product Operations group
These actions can open the door to manageable Product roles, and putting Product Managers back in the headlines for the right reasons – creating and sustaining great products.
That’s it for this edition!
Join me next time as we continue to go upstream to make you more effective going from idea to execution via strategy, Product Management, and the full end-to-end delivery stack.