What kind of product manager are you ?

Product management is complex. The work is ambiguous. The long hours working on a product has its price if you don’t have the right people behind you. Product requires leadership that requires cross-disciplinary thinking from fields as software development, architecture, business to market fit. A vast breadth of insight and the best practices gives a product leader a unique insight. Their point of view combined with their experience brings multiple products from ideation to market. That is how best practices are born, and when leveraged, can make great things happen. Hopefully, that is how most product professionals advance in their careers. They’ve taken those ideas and put them to work again and again. Product leaders should implement best practices and stay inside the organization’s circle of competence. But what is circle of competance ? Circle of Competence is simple: Each of us, through experience or study, has built up useful knowledge on certain areas of the world. Some areas are understood by most of us, while some areas require a lot more specialty to evaluate. Whether it’s a new company or a new team, these professionals need to show empathy towards the company culture. Newly hired leaders must respect the company culture and exhibit a level of empathy to their new team. The leadership transition also affects employees, so an effective leader knows how the change affects their colleagues.

From thoughts to results

If a tree falls into the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound? Let’s adapt the famous question into one that fits “people leadership”. Being good at what you do is a given. You’ve earned that experience in your career. None of that matters if you can’t relate to your current environment. Talking about your ideas is useless if it doesn’t affect the company culture. It’s about managing relationships. People have to respect what you bring to the table. If they don’t see you as credible, your value decreases. If your ideas don’t connect, then you are that tree mentioned earlier. Best practices are fascinating thought exercises, but if they don’t affect change, that is all they are. Enterprises struggle with transformation. Anyone that has done this work long enough has seen the following play out:

• New hire comes on board and promises a digital transformation within 12 months.
• Come in with all sorts of bonafide — they’ve worked with all the essential companies.
• Leader makes a big speech and gets the team fired up.
• Nothing happens.

Let’s make soem assumptions for this transformation: the teams have a communication issue and find themselves siloed. On the other hand they have the best practices and experience, but they can’t connect. Results:

• The behavior does not align with the values of the company.
• When asked about it, they get process documentation, if anything at all.

These examples show how thought leadership can happen without culture shifts.

Culture — success or failure

Now, here is an example of effectively applying culture-shifting practices.

The leader comes on board and promises a digital transformation within 12 months.When the leader comes in, they avoid the splash. Instead of trying to grab the spotlight, they spend time listening. They do so to understand the culture they are working with, where their experience can help, and where it won’t.

The leader comes in with all sorts of bonafide they’ve worked with all the past companies.Instead of leading with company names, the leader leads with experience. They tell stories that pair with the listening tour and give the folks around them a feel of who they are. Along the way, they find minor problems and fix them.

The leader makes a big speech and gets the team fired up. The leader distributes the work. Instead of putting themselves out front immediately, they learn. After finding the actual difference makers, they get their buy-in before going to the group. This way, they know they have support at all levels.

Don't ever get in to the agile-fall trap

Those three changes expose culture. The company gets to be better at making changes because the changes tie to a realistic vision. An example i like to most is when shifting from waterfall to agile, you should approch each team and understand what waterfall did for them. After understanding each team’s waterfall processes, you should develop a business case to sell your agile plan. Listen,use your experience, and get buy-in. As a rule of thumb If you are running more reviews of the process than retrospectives, you’ve fallen to a trap. We’ve all been on teams where agile turned into “agile-fall,” and everyone curse the process. Change is hard, the process is iterative, and when you treat it that way, you’ll get better.

Thought Leadership vs. People Leadership

Changes are an evolutionary process. They aren’t something that happens only once. Leading doesn’t mean being curious and going to make the conference talk. Remember this: “If you have a best practice, and it doesn’t change the culture, is it a best practice at all?” The concept also applies to ourselves. Making an impact once is good, but we want to expand our circle of competence. There is an opportunity to build that muscle by working within our culture, seeking new problems, and staying curious. When you do that, you shift. You go from one experience to multiple. Remember, leadership is ambiguous, and what you do here won’t always get you to the place you want to go. The more product narratives you have, the more you can exhibit your competence around the organization. Every cycle of change is another opportunity to add to your experience and you best practices will evolve. That development helps develop yourself as a realized thought leader. An influential thought leader can tell a product narrative in multiple ways while shedding light on the problem from different angles. We can’t avoid the will to lead. It’s a part of us being leaders as product mangers. Change is hard, and our thoughts need to evolve. It’s an iterative process, and when you start treating it that way, you’ll get better. That said, being a thought leader is close to meaningless if you’re not a people leader. As you do that, you’ll make the best environment to increase productivity from your team and improve your abilities. Remember, your team sucess its yours. Coming in and dropping in ideas isn’t going to do anything. Being able to take those ideas, help them evolve, and make them relevant is the step to leveling up your career.