Slides Chris Butler recently used in his discussion w/ mentees of The Product Mentor. Synopsis: How do you know you (or someone you are managing) are a great product manager? How do you continuously push the quality of product work higher in your organization? How do you identify what is 'great' product work anyways? This talk will give methods to help product managers grow and be great. It will be helpful for people that are product manager managers today, those who want to be managers, and any product manager that wants to take their skills up a level. The Product Mentor is a program designed to pair Product Mentors and Mentees from around the World, across all industries, from start-up to enterprise, guided by the fundamental goals…Better Decisions. Better Products. Better Product People. Throughout the program, each mentor leads a conversation in an area of their expertise that is live streamed and available to both mentee and the broader product community. http://TheProductMentor.com

1. Product management
management
The Product Mentor Session 8
For references and more info:
https://goo.gl/9LC5o1

2. Chris Butler
Director of AI @ Philosophie NYC
TBPP 2016, TPM 4/6/7/8
18 years of product and BD
Microsoft, Waze, Horizon Ventures,
KAYAK, and started my own company
(failed)
chrisbutler@philosophie.is
@chrizbot

4. Why listen to me?
● Manager of program managers at Microsoft
● Manager of product strategists at Philosophie
○ And set practice for all product strategists
● Mentorship through TPM

5. Why listen to me (really)?
● I have managed teams of product managers
● I have hired people
● I have “let go” of people
● I have helped junior employees become great employees
● I have helped people progress in their careers
● I care about the growth of all product managers

6. Today’s talk will cover a lot of ground
● What is product - in case you forgot
● Management basics
● Individual management
● Team management

7. In particular, you should take away three things:
● Product Management is not Management
● Product Management can’t be measured like a product
● Knowing how to manage can make you a better individual
contributor

8. Product management

12. “It depends…”

14. Holder of the product context

15. Advocate for the customer

16. Helps the team interpret VUCA
of the world
(volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity)

17. All about mental models...

18. ...and meta-mental models
(aka metacognition)

19. The Right or Best Process™
does not exist

20. Management

21. Things managers do
● Hiring and firing
● Promotions
● Allocations and assignment
● Mentoring
● Career growth - “This isn’t your last job”

22. As a manager:
You need to care

23. You need to be direct

25. You need to trust

26. “Consent over consensus”

27. It is about decision authority

28. You need to let people learn...

29. ...and failure is how we learn

30. “Bad news should travel faster
than good news.”

31. “But the human mathematician would
likewise make blunders when trying out
new techniques… In other words then, if
a machine is expected to be infallible, it
cannot also be intelligent.”
-Alan Turing, 1947

32. Product management
as managers

33. Only way forward is up?

34. Managing individuals

36. 1:1s

38. For managers, 1:1s should be...
● Sacred time - you don’t move them but they can
● Weekly for an hour
● Space for the employee, not you
● Not status

39. For employees, 1:1s should be...
● Space to talk about concerns
● Career growth questions

40. Delegation

41. Delegation Poker by Management 3.0

42. Sample scenarios
Sprint themes/goals
UX button placement
Brand application
Technical architecture changes
Deprioritizing work
User journey changes (in what we are building)
User journey changes (for human process
outside what we are building)
Customer research interviews
Project updates to stakeholders
Story generation
Approval/QA of stories when complete
Tradeoff decisions
Schedule decisions
Copy in the UX

43. Quality bar

44. Losing trust
Gaining and building trust
The minimum bar
Spelling
Grammar
Doesn’t know
the audience Logically
cohesive
“Answer, then
explain”
Expands
understanding
??
Makes hard
decisions
?
Creates
alignment
Complete
sentences
Contradictions
Understands
the audience

45. N-dimensions
(one way: use Delegation Poker)

46. Success

48. As a team, not as an individual...

49. ...but you have a role to play
towards the success

50. Questions you should be asking your team regularly
● What is the strategy for the product, as you see it, and how do you feel about
it?
● What do you need to do right now for the product?
● How do you feel your work contributes towards the high level goals and
strategy of the product?
● How do you feel overall about the work you are doing on the product?

51. Managing teams

52. You have control but not complete control
● Teams have emergent behavior (aka culture)
● Based on strategy/goals, people, and behaviors
● You can affect goals and behaviors
● Your job is to make sure the team can have success…
● ...but you can’t make them successful

53. The team is only as complex as the
number of people you allow to make
decisions

54. If you make all decisions that means a
whole team is only as complex as you

55. It is about decision authority, again

56. Assignment and allocation

57. Based on your org
● Feature-by-feature
● Matrix
● Spotify type guilds
● Apprentice models (see Cutler)
● Business metrics or a KPI

58. It is about decision authority, yes, again

59. Learning from each other’s work

62. Product critiques
● Engineers and designers critique their work—why don't we?
● Our artifacts are presentations, documents, etc.
● Each round
○ 5 min - help you need, audience, and the work
○ 5 min - critique from your peers and leaders
○ 5 min more, as needed

63. Rules
Presenters
● No sales pitches
● Talk less, not more
● Leave with a list — you take your
own notes
● It is up to you to decide to take
your feedback (or ignore it)
Critiquers
● Critique, not criticism
● Talk about the work, not the person
● Ask more questions, make less
assertions
● It doesn’t matter what you like or
dislike
● Don’t ‘product’ in the meeting

64. Increasing the team’s knowledge

65. What does your team need to learn?
● Skills, mental models, process, techniques, etc.
● Based on:
○ Experience level
○ Interest by individuals
○ Need within the organization

66. Skills survey
● Understand how much experience people have:
○ Never done it before
○ Did it a few times
○ Did it a lot
○ Taught a course on it - thank you, Mr. Feynman

67. Plan each thing you want to learn
● Pre-work
● Introduction
● Discussion
● Application - ideally, to real work
● Post mortem

68. Sample: Sales Safari
Pre-work
Week 0
● Review Amy Hoy’s video about it
First meeting
Week 1
● 5 minute summary of video
● Ideation of when this would be helpful (via Dotvoter)
● Discussion
● Homework assignment
Homework
Week 2
● Do a sales safari for someone else’s engagement
● Create a summary artifact
Second meeting
Week 3
● Presentations of homework
● Ideation of when this would not be helpful (via Dotvoter)
● Discussion
● Retro on process of learning

69. In conclusion…

70. Remember
● Management isn’t product management
● Product management can’t be measured like a product
● Knowing how to manage can make you a better individual
contributor

71. Thank you
For references and more info:
https://goo.gl/9LC5o1