Having experienced both the positives and negatives of being in product roles, I have now made it my mission to help Founders and Product Managers build a positive relationship from the very start. 

Simple fact: Product management has been established as a discipline for over 20 years and yet, even as a senior product leader, I still explain or at best clarify what I do on most days. This doesn’t happen for other disciplines like Sales, Marketing or Finance – why?

This topic is ever so relevant now, when the role of product management is being questioned and scrutinised more and more. Product Managers can be seen as complicating things, taking too long to ship stuff, not reacting to opportunities quick enough, or not listening at all. In some cases this can be true, and if you are reading this you are probably in a situation where there is some lack of clarity. 

In my opinion, at the core of the problem is an unrealistic expectation of what product management is and does, often on both fronts.

Some companies may expect Product Managers to produce a predictable roadmap that includes all of the stakeholders’ requests and enables them to forecast how much revenue they will generate in the next three years, or in some cases, expect them to “ship the roadmap” as set by the C-suite.

On the other hand, a Product Manager might think that they are hired to discover, prioritise and solve the most compelling user problems, producing good outcomes for users and the business, continuously researching, testing and pivoting where needed. This is often what is advertised on the job description too.

The reality is that a Product Manager, on a general level, is there to understand and take feedback on board from users and the business, keep up with the competition and market trends, translate this data into a viable product strategy and roadmap, prioritise initiatives, negotiate with stakeholders, lead teams to ship stuff often, and keep the product healthy and competitive. This combination of activities is hard to practise well and will change from company to company, depending on the size, personalities, target market etc…

Some Product Managers can feel overwhelmed by these demands, especially if they are the first Product person in the company and are expected to set things up for success. 

Product Managers are often generalists who tend to be stronger in one area (either Tech, or Business or Users) and there is often a lot of imposter syndrome that comes with this role; this happens not only because of the knowledge they have to build in the other areas, but also because of the knowledge they need to develop about the product, market and company itself.

However, at companies where Management and Product have a mutual understanding, things can really thrive. In my previous experience, I got to build a fabulous team from scratch, we discovered and mapped user problems, delivered solutions that made users happy and shot the numbers up, we tamed an enormous amount of tech debt and upgraded our stack, with both revenue and MAU going through the roof. For this to happen sustainably, Founders and Product must understand each other well. 

For a Product Manager to succeed there has to be (some form of) business direction. The word strategy comes to mind here, but I know a lot of busy Founders can perceive this as a luxury to have when they might be worrying about generating investments or dealing with a big technical backlog. Words like “Vision”, “Mission” and “Strategy” can seem fluffy and abstract, but they are the engine that will make decisions easy and bring your product forward.

It’s often easier to think of projects as a strategy, e.g. “if we could ship x feature we could attract so many clients in this new market”. While there is nothing wrong with wanting to ship new functionalities, the problem here is that your Product Manager is not going to be able to say no to all the good projects that you could be doing, or worse,  they could be scattering precious resources trying to do them all. You are creating a situation where making decisions is too hard and this will create conflicts between departments. 

As a strong Founder you should provide a reason for saying no to things. This is the most crucial piece of advice I have to share. To use a really simple metaphor, if your holiday destination is a beach in Brazil, you are just not going to bring a pair of snow boots with you. Similarly, try to think about what your destination is and the essentials that you are going to need to get there. Discuss this with your Product Manager right at the start, providing as much clarity as possible. A Product Manager, especially if it’s your first one, will thrive in an environment like this. They’ll have enough focus to know what to research and experiment on, and enough freedom to build a product strategy that delivers you good numbers. 

Spoiler: revenue is not a destination in itself, that’s the same as saying that you want to take £1m with you on holiday with no idea of what you are going to do with it. The problem with having a financial target as your vision or destination is that there are too many ways in which you could be making money, including utilising dark patterns or gaming your numbers. You will of course need cash flow to run the business and will want to make a profit too, but ask yourself why does the company exists, what would the world miss if it weren’t there?

Setting the scene with your new Product Manager will have a huge impact on your product. You don’t have to have all the answers either, just start mapping what you know and what you don’t know about your product, users and market. Perhaps a SWOT analysis is a good place to start, but keep it simple and be honest with what you are aiming to achieve.

I hope you have found this brief overview useful; Product Management can be very rewarding and I hope that more Founders will have a positive experience right from the start. Get in touch if you want to discuss more or need some help with Product or strategy. 

Is there anything else that you would like me to write about? Get in touch and let me know!