Are You Doing Product Management or Bullshit Management?
Backlog Manager vs. Product Manager. You’re the hero of your story, not the victim of the circumstances.
Hey, Paweł here. Welcome to the free archived edition of The Product Compass.
Our guest is
, a passionate product leader with over 15 years of product management experience, from Brazil to Germany, from start-ups to scale-ups.David is also the author of the book Untrapping Product Teams (available for pre-order) and writes the Untrapping Product Teams newsletter on Substack.
As you will see, he's tired of bullshit.
Are You Doing Product Management or Bullshit Management?
Something in digital product management continuously strikes me.
Companies hire experienced product professionals hoping to scale up their products. However, what happens in practice is frightening.
Such product professionals are powerless because they lack decision power. Top management believes in knowing what to do best and expects product professionals to follow their orders.
When you hit the corporate firewall, your fate is sad. You end up in a situation where you’re doing anything but product management. Ultimately, you get stuck with bullshit management.
Without decision power, product managers cannot thrive.
Be careful! What companies say and do often go in opposite directions.
They may say they have flat hierarchies, but you will stumble upon extensive decision-making processes and ultimately fall into analysis paralysis.
You may be empowered to make decisions, but that will only extend to a specific context. For example, you may decide how best to implement a solution but not which problem to solve.
I’m shocked by how opinions and hierarchy drive business. I wonder if leaders hire Product Managers to do product management or bullshit management.
Let me illustrate what I call bullshit management and how you can escape such a horrible trap.
What Is Bullshit Management
For years, I thought I was doing product management because I frequently got good feedback, but then I realized I was not driving value. The hard way, I learned that I was doing more bullshit management than product management.
Bullshit management is the art of doing things that create no value but drain your energy. It distracts teams from doing what matters.
If you don’t know how what you’re doing creates value, you’re probably doing bullshit management.
The more bullshit you handle, the less value you create.
I call bullshit management when you spend time doing things unrelated to product management. Before I clarify what I mean by that, let me share my perspective on what makes great Product Managers.
Leading teams to create value for end-users and businesses by identifying significant problems to solve and uncovering unexplored potential.
For me, an excellent Product Manager is an inspiring person. She motivates people to do what they didn’t even know they could. She also sets inspiring goals and empowers teams to decide how to reach them. She is not a boss but a leader the team follows.
If your daily activities are related to what I’ve just mentioned, I believe you’re doing product management. However, if you’re doing something unrelated, you are potentially doing bullshit management.
Here are some common red flags:
Gathering requirements from stakeholders to solve their wants instead of establishing relationships with them to deliver on end-users needs
Keeping an extensive Product Backlog to tell stakeholders their requests are registered instead of removing items unrelated to your current goals
Preparing frequent performance reports for management instead of evaluating the impact of your deliverables
Striving for consensus to please all stakeholders instead of seeking the best option for the product
Signing off all items delivered by the team to ensure it matches your quality control instead of empowering them to reach goals
Attending countless meetings to avoid pissing off critical stakeholders
Fear of saying no to pointless requests because your boss may get an e-mail
Bridging communication between business stakeholders and developers instead of being a catalyst and fostering collaboration
Prioritizing features based on opinions instead of learning from end-users
Focusing on delivering features over maximizing the value
Spending time explaining why an initiative failed instead of sharing what you learned from your failure
Whenever you see one of these signs, you better take a stand and help the organization move from dysfunctional product management to a solid one.
As a Product Manager, you shouldn’t bow to anti-patterns but fight against them.
How to Escape From Bullshit Management
I named a few anti-patterns you will eventually face in your journey, but I don’t want to leave you powerless. Let me give you some tips on how to fight common anti-patterns.
Tactic 1: Move from features to outcomes, from opinions to evidence
Stakeholders will push you to implement the features they want. Before making any decision, you can ask some questions, for example:
💡 Could you help me understand how this feature relates to our goal?
💡 Which evidence would you have that this feature solves our users’ problems?
💡 Which problem do you want to solve with this feature?
💡 Let’s say we implement this feature. How do we measure its success?
💡 If we didn’t do it, what would happen?
The answers to these questions can surprise you and your stakeholders. They may refrain from progressing with their request. If they insist without evidence, it’s your role to insist on objective evidence. Opinions shouldn’t drive product teams.
Product Managers need to lead teams in creating solutions for end-users. We build products and services to make their lives better.
To succeed, you need to move from pleasing stakeholders to helping end-users progress.
Tactic 2: Avoid bridging communication
It’s a common mistake to perceive Product Managers as bridges between business and tech teams. A better way is to provide the correct context to tech teams, empower them to make decisions, and encourage them to talk to business stakeholders whenever needed.
You may think letting developers exchange directly with stakeholders is dangerous because they may try to hijack requests into your Sprints. That can happen, but having a team of rule followers instead of problem-solvers is way more dangerous.
If stakeholders try hijacking something, provide feedback and encourage developers to redirect such discussions to you as they may not feel comfortable handling it.
Tactic 3: Focus on learning instead of planning
Everyone loves security, and there is nothing better than having a step-by-step plan for everything ahead of you. Don’t fall into this trap. Stakeholders will push for prescriptive plans and commitment to deadlines.
No plan will survive contact with end-users. Instead of creating a plan, make an assumptions list of what must happen for your idea to fly. Find fast ways of testing your assumptions. The faster you learn, the sooner you succeed.
Solid product management has little to do with plans.
Don’t focus on plans. Put your energy into defining where to land and your first step toward it. You don’t need anything beyond that to start. After that, adapt your actions according to what you have learned.
Here are some signs you’re focused on learning instead of planning:
✔️ Your Product Backlog is lean, with no more than a couple of months of work
✔️ You delete Product Backlog items when they don’t relate to your learnings
✔️ You discontinue features because they prove to create little to no value
Now, let’s explore what happens when solid product management is swallowed by the enemy.
The Unfortunate Fate When Bullshit Management Takes Over
When Product Managers fall prey to bullshit management, the future isn’t fun. They mutate into backlog managers, and their job is limited and uninspiring.
Let me elaborate on the critical differences between Backlog Managers and Product Managers so you can fight this tragic situation:
We need more Product Managers.
What could you do today to move from Backlog Manager to Product Manager?
You can change this game. I've been a Backlog Manager for a big part of my life, and it's frustrating but possible to change it.
You’re the hero of your story, not the victim of the circumstances.
Don't let the status quo limit you.
Do what's right, not what's easy.
Final Thoughts
Despite our economic uncertainty, the market for Product Managers is still hot. Companies are fighting for outstanding professionals. If you want to join the club, plenty of open positions await you. However, be ready to face many anti-patterns and setbacks.
Even though companies will hunt great professionals down, it doesn’t mean they offer you a great environment to thrive.
You must fight the anti-patterns and help them overcome their dysfunctions.
Great Product Managers will never bow to anti-patterns. They will always fight back to ensure they can improve the end users' lives.
–
Let's rock the product world together!
Here are a few ways I can help you rock the product world and defeat bullshit management:
Have a lovely day,
David
Thanks for reading The Product Compass!
It’s fantastic to learn and grow together.
Here’s what you might have recently missed:
Product Model First Principles from Transformed: Part 1, Part 2
How to Write a Product Requirements Document? The Best PRD Template.
Product Vision vs Strategy vs Objectives vs Roadmap: The Advanced Edition
Subscribe or upgrade your account, if you haven’t already, for the full experience:
Take care,
Paweł
 | A guest post by
|
I’ve seen it twice in two different organizations. It’s very difficult to make a change in a scenario where the top management knows better than data, evidence, and the product team.
What’s the cure?
Leave.
How to avoid this in the future?
I think once you experience it, you will start asking in interviews how much power do the product people in the organization have. If they speak to the customers. If they are the ones to make calls. If they can do more than just shift tickets in the backlog.
Sadly speaking most of the problems mentioned in this article do not happen to product management only. It happens to all departments in an organization when the management adopts top down approach.