Learn, Make, Learn
Learn, Make, Learn is two product geeks sharing qualitative & quantitative perspectives to help you make, better. Hosted by Ernest Kim and Joachim Groeger.
Learn, Make, Learn
WTF is a Product Manager?
This week, we dive into Ernest's career as a product manager/product marketer and discuss what a product manager does, how to sift meaningful insights from the noise, how to enter the field & much more.
FOLLOW-UPS – 02:25
Surprised by the Hot Hand Fallacy?
Imagined Consumption Reduces Actual Consumption
I placed too much faith in underpowered studies
WTF IS A PRODUCT MANAGER? – 07:24
Ernest’s blog post on this topic
Why The Hidden Risks Of Specialization Help Explain Crises
How “Jobs to Be Done” Can Help You Make, Better
UNDERSTANDING YOUR CUSTOMER – 12:04
THE PRODUCT BRIEF – 21:34
Give me the freedom of a tight brief
GETTING TO THE WHY – 26:09
Coca-Cola “Polar Bowl”
CHEERLEADING, MOMENTUM, HONESTY & RISK – 33:32
The Greatest Night in Pop
THE DREADED ‘CEO PROJECT’ – 39:43
WHAT PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT PRODUCT MANAGEMENT – 41:47
Sports Product Management at University of Oregon
HOW TO BECOME A PM – 45:06
Kicksology.net—Don’t Call it a Comeback
Apple Hires Anand Lal Shimpi
Google hires The Verge’s Deiter Bohn
Architecture and design with Dami
ADVICE TO YOUR 16-YEAR-OLD SELF – 53:22
Steve Jobs Secrets of Life
WEEKLY RECS – 55:53
BBC Connections
The Greatest Shot in Television
Steve Jobs, internal “Chalk Talk” for NeXT, 1991
Naim Mu-So 2
Andrew Robinson’s review of the Mu-So 2
NeXT Cube
Steve Jobs intro’s the original iMac
CLOSING & PREVIEW – 01:07:53
(Image credit: Ernest Kim)
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CREDITS
Theme: Vendla / Today Is a Good Day / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Drum hit: PREL / Musical Element 85 / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Hello and welcome to Learn Make Learn where we share qualitative and quantitative perspectives on products to help you make better. My name is Ernest Kim, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host Joachim Groeger. Hey, Joachim, how's it going?
Joachim:I am good. I've um, I've fired up the barbecue'cause we're gonna have a grilling session. I'm gonna be grilling you, so I'm looking forward to that.
Ernest:I love it. Trash talk.
Joachim:Yeah. But I'm, I'm, uh, I'm in good spirits. I'm ready for this. This is gonna be a great conversation. So I'm in, I'm in a good spot. How about you? We are recording this unusually at the beginning of the week, so I could ask you, how's your week starting off?
Ernest:Well, to be honest, it's been a tough couple of weeks on my end, uh,, a really long couple of weeks, but I see, uh,, light at the end of the tunnel, and it's in the shape of a sand worm because excited that we're going to go to watch Dune Two this Sunday. Uh,, they're doing this like spec, I think they're calling it a fan preview'cause um, it, uh,, officially opens, I think March 2nd next Thursday or Friday. But, they're having these IMAX screenings on Sunday. So, I've been irrationally exuberant about this movie for, for probably the past year or so. I, I absolutely cannot wait. really looking forward to seeing it. Hopefully it lives up to my probably too lofty expectations.
Joachim:I had completely forgotten that it is upon us, so I'm also very excited now that you've mentioned it. Yeah, that's a big cultural moment in the middle of winter it's gonna be good. Let's just hope that, yeah, I think it's gonna
Ernest:I really hope so. I really hope so. right, well, this is episode eight and our topic today is what the Bleep is a Product Manager? It's the second and a series of episodes in which Joachim and I interview each other with a focus on our careers for the benefit of anyone interested in pursuing our respective career paths. In our last episode, I you Joachim to find out what an Applied Micro Economist does, and today as JohE implied, uh,, he's gonna interview me or grill me about my career as a product manager. But before diving into our interview, let's start with some follow ups to our previous episode. I actually don't have any, but how about you, Joachim? Do you have any follow ups?
Joachim:I wanted a. Discuss very, very briefly the hot hand fallacy. in our conversation last time, I didn't, I didn't feel like I painted a good picture of what those couple of papers were that came out in recent years that were revisiting the question of the hot hand and the hot hand fallacy being the behavioral bias where people foolishly believe that there is a hot hand. So I just wanted to say that the paper that I was referencing is, called Survive by the Hot Hand Fallacy, A Truth in the Law of Small Numbers, and it's by Miller and Sandro. And I just wanted to give a couple sentence summary of what they figured out. Basically you're looking at streaks within the data, that process of looking for streaks and then measuring what is the chance that someone is gonna hit another point after they've hit a streak. that measurement approach if you did it intuitively, is actually slightly biased and it's always gonna be biased in the wrong way. So you are always going to assume there is no hot hand, even though there might be one. And that's what they showed, that if you looked at streaks of length, three or four, whatever number comes out of your computation, of what's the chance that you're gonna make another shot after a streak, it's always underestimating what the real probability is. And so you would call everyone that believes in the hot hand. Behaviorally biased. So what these chaps said, no, no, no. There's a small bias. It's very subtle. And even experts would make a mistake when they're doing the measurements. And there was a follow up paper to that where someone actually built out an even more dramatic and technically detailed way of testing for streakiness in the data and they were still able to find streaks in the data. So, those papers were linked and referenced in the previous episode, but I just wanted to give that mini little description of what Sanjurjo and Miller did because they were the first people to kick off the possibility that something was up with the stats and it wasn't so obvious. So I quite like that little bit.
Ernest:if you don't mind, I was curious to get your thoughts on something I, I had meant to actually asked this in our last episode, um, but didn't, but I was curious you, a couple of episodes back, you had talked about the replication crisis that's happening in the scientific community these days. And then you just, you know, talked about, the behavioral economics and, you know, that's a area that's, you know, hit, been hit with a pretty big, replication issue around one of the stars in that space. I was just curious, what do you think of behavioral economics? Do you think it's a, a, real discipline?
Joachim:At the time when I was coming up through academia, which was almost 15 years ago now, behavioral economics was everywhere. It was very popular and they were flying too close to the sun because they would be going from these very dinky little cognitive biases, to then saying, oh, this is how we need to change some big policy things. You know, I'll eat the chocolate cake now as opposed to having the vegetable first and then a chocolate cake and now you're telling me you need to redo my 401k. For me, that felt always like such a big leap. And the only defense they always had was they said, oh, we've done these laboratory experiments and so that makes it scientific. And it was always suspect when they were going from laboratory experiments that had about 20 to 30, subjects in them to, okay, I'm gonna take over your 401k and I'm gonna rewrite the rules for that for everyone, for millions of people. To be honest, I I wasn't that surprised that these studies would not replicate, many times over. Especially because they started getting more and more extreme and ridiculous. there is a science paper that was published about 10 years ago. and in that one they got people to visualize eating a donut, and then they were presented with a plate of donuts and they were asked to have a donut if they wanted to. So that was one group. And in the other group they were told, just think about whatever, and then here's a plate of donuts. So it turns out the people that thought about the donut before they were presented with a plate of donuts were less likely to overeat. And, and there you go. That's one of those things where you go, what is this? It's, it's a little bit ambitious. And, the discipline then started being removed because it became a game of what's the craziest kookiest little experiment that I could come up with as opposed to, is there a way to actually validate this stuff and verify whether we're actually making a good difference to them. So that was a roundabout way of saying I was very skeptical about the discipline. And actually we can link to this in the show notes. Daniel Kahneman, kinda the founding father of behavioral economics, Nobel Prize winner on on this subject, admitted that they had overstepped it and they had been indexing way too much on underpowered studies and there was something wrong with where we are right now. So even the founding fathers kind of saying something is up. I'm glad he said that because telling everyone that stupid is, is kind of a sad state of affairs. I kind of said that last time as well, so here we are.
Ernest:No, no, that's great. It's great to get your perspective on it. Alright, well with those follow ups out of the way, let's get to our main topic, what the bleep is a product manager and I'll actually pass to mic back to Joachim to get the conversation started.
Joachim:Thank you, Ernest. I'm very excited to be able to dig around in your philosophy let's start easy here and build some foundations for this conversation. What is a product manager and what do you do day to day?
Ernest:Yeah, the and I wanna emphasize too up front that I'm gonna be very. Opinionated in this. this is not meant to be representative of all perspectives on product management. I, I intentionally didn't spend time, you know, kind of looking at other people's points of view because I just wanted to share my own, based on my own experiences and not try to kind of represent something that I haven't experienced myself. one other thing kind of in that vein to touch on too is I, I think there is a bit of a debate on is there a difference between product management and product marketing? And something I've heard, I. one definition I've heard is that product management is kind of the internal facing aspects of the job. And product marketing is the outward facing or the consumer facing parts of the job. And, you know, that's kind of, a rational I've seen as to why you might wanna have both of those roles. In my experience and in my opinion, based on that experience, I really think that it's just one job. Um, Talked about this a little bit last episode, that there's this tendency within corporations to want to just continue to atomize and specialize. And I think that oftentimes that's not particularly helpful. so I think it's really important that as a product manager or a product marketer, you. Handle both of those aspects, the inward facing and the outward facing. I just think it'd be incredibly difficult to do one without really having a very firm grasp on the other as well, to be able to address the inward internal facing needs without really knowing the, you know, consumer needs and vice versa. So, all of these things I'm gonna be saying are from the perspective that I think it's one role, whether you call it product management or product marketing, it's really one role. as to what, how I define it, to me, a product manager is a generalist amongst specialists As product managers, our job is to inspire those specialists. You could also call them domain experts. And so our job is to inspire them to apply their expertise towards a shared vision for a product or service. And that vision is, is captured in the form of a brief, which typically documents in who we're creating for our customer. And what need we're addressing. And you know, there could be different language you use around that. Like we've talked about the jobs to be done framework that could be one, kind of form of language you might use around that. But fundamentally it's to me about who's the customer, what need are we trying to address for them with this product or service. And then I'd say almost as important as what we do is what we don't do, in my opinion, which is that we don't tell our domain experts how to do what we're asking them to do. think that's something vital for any good product manager to understand, is that, you know, they're the experts and so, you know, we really need to have enough confidence, to. Let them come up with those answers as to the how. You know, our job is to give them the fuel. and also really importantly, the, the constraints that they need to make their best judgments when it comes to the how. you know, whether that's domain, ex domain experts in design or engineering, you know, whatever the case may be, you know, give them that inspiration and those constraints, but then let them determine the how, because that's their expertise. I'd say that's something that I'd seen as kind of the, the most common mistake made by especially young product managers is, and I've made this mistake myself, really kind of trying to move the pencil for the designer. and that's, you know, a great recipe for no longer being a product manager.
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:But it's also, how you get to bad product because. You know, if you were a great designer, you'd be a designer, right? So your, your expertise is in this other area is, is kind of in this luxury of being a generalist. and so really the best thing you could do is inspire those experts around you to do their best in terms of the ways that they're able to contribute to whatever project that you might be, working on. I'd say if, if there's one area of expertise that a product manager should have, it's in the customer because. You as a generalist, you're the one person in the room who has that luxury to really dedicate yourself to the customer. You know, let's say if you're talking about design, they have all of these other things that they need to focus on aside from the customer. Just that craft of design. You know, oftentimes if it's a bigger, bigger company, they'll have an organ design organization and that organization will have imperatives that that designer needs to deliver against. So, you know, whether it's design or engineering or any one of these other. Expert roles you're tapping into, they're all gonna have, you know, many, many other imperatives that they're, they need to deliver against. So you as the product manager, have that this great opportunity and, responsibility to be that voice of the customer, in that project from start to finish. You know, like I mentioned in the beginning, you capture that in the brief, but you know, that's one moment in time. So it's playing that role all the way through, till the product or service is out in the marketplace. So, a little bit long-winded, but that's my definition of what a product manager is.
Joachim:So it sounds like you're kind of a signal ingester for the marketplace and the signals that you're trying to pick up on all the customer signals. How do you go about doing that? There's so much noise. How do you filter and then how do you know that you've tapped into something real as opposed to the noise?
Ernest:That's a great question. The way you put that is great too. That that part of how do you know it's real is is the vital part because. Now it's easy to get data. you know, when I started it was a little more challenging. Now it's like, you know, it's incredibly easy to get access to lots of data. The challenge is understanding what's real. and honestly from my perspective, I, I wish I could provide a, an easy kind of formula, easy checklist as to how to do this. But it really comes down to judgment. And I haven't found one specific approach or one specific framework that applies across the board. And I'd say that that's probably been one of the most important things I've learned over the years is don't try to fit everything into the same box. Different projects are gonna have different circumstances. different customers are going to have, different circumstances and be in different places. And so part of your job as a product manager is to find ways to get meaningful insights from that audience that you're focused on for that given project. And if you're gonna, I think if you kind of approach it with that, oh, I'm gonna just apply the same approach that I do every single time. I've, my experience has been that that's kind of a, a recipe for failure. That's why, you know, as much as I'm a fan of jobs to be done, I don't think it applies to every single project. something that I think could be useful. I, you know, there'll be other frameworks that we talk about in the future that can be useful as a starting point. But, I think you really have to be willing and able to be flexible in the way you, engage with your customer to get useful feedback from them. And then it's a matter of judgment, as to how you come to understand whether something is meaningful. I can remember one example that comes to mind for me. There was a project where we were really struggling. we saw this opportunity with this new kind of customer for a product that had existed for a long time. but we just couldn't quite crack what it was that they were looking for. and we had a lot of assumptions. And so we built some prototypes based on those assumptions. And, we were really confident that these customers would like these prototypes. But once we rolled them out, they said, no, you know, that's not it. You know, that's a X Ins instead of Y, which is what we were hoping they would say. And so that was a very helpful, tool, you know, actually having prototypes, I think. you know, Steve Jobs often derided focus groups and I think there's a place for them, but I also think that, that place is fairly limited. So if you're really trying to get meaningful feedback, I think it's incredibly helpful to have prototypes that people can respond to because they're not sitting around thinking about your topic all day long, right? Like you are as the, the person making the product. Um, so giving people something that they can react to and respond to is, is very helpful. Um, so, you know, having that as a tool was very helpful. We learned that that wasn't that thing that they were looking for. And so the next set of sessions we really just focused on, okay, if it isn't that, what is it? And we came up with some exercises to specifically address that question. Um, so again, you know, I. Wasn't something I'd ever done before, but it was just focused on the specific question we were trying to answer. And we, our, my team brainstormed around. Okay, given that question, what mechanisms can we use to get at the answer most effectively? And as is most often the case, the the best way to do it is often not through language. You know, just because that same reason people aren't thinking about these things all the time. So oftentimes they don't have the right language for it. And in fact, that got us on the wrong track. We kind of fixated on language that they were using, and it turned out that that wasn't actually what they meant. It was, that's just the only words that they had to express what they meant. Um, yeah. Yeah. And so through these exercises, we were able to finally unlock. What they meant when they were using these, these other words. Uh, and, but we validated that. So then we went back for the next round and, you know, made a new set of prototypes based on that insight. And it turns out that that was correct. Um, so I, I think if we, we'd gone into it very dogmatically and said, well, this is how we always do it. We wouldn't have landed on that, that effective solution that ended up being a very successful product in the marketplace. So I think it's so important to be flexible and, um, adaptive and be willing to adapt based on the circumstances, based on the question you're trying to answer. Uh, I know it's not a satisfying answer, but, um, that's, uh, really the best answer I can provide based on what I've experienced.
Joachim:in your description, Ernest, you said you started off with identifying a segment of the customer base that you hadn't addressed in the past. Was there a chance that you might have actually ended up in a situation where you said, actually we were wrong. There was no customer group here. You mentioned the fact that they were using incorrect language to describe what it is that they were getting at. So were there moments where you had concern that this was the right group? Does it really exist? Was it something more nebulous that you had grabbed onto that, that maybe isn't the market? And if that was the case, how did you navigate that uncertainty?
Ernest:No, absolutely it did. Yeah. And so before those sessions that I described, we actually had a series of focus groups where we act. We didn't even get to product. It was just, does this population even exist? Is this a real thing or is this just something, you know, we're imagining? So because that was a very real question we had for ourselves, and we knew that that was going to be a very real question that our internal stakeholders would have as well. Like, is this real? Is this actually a. A customer'cause it we hadn't ever seen it before or we never had language to describe them. And this was an interesting case too, where this customer was buying the existing products, but once you talked to them, you would find that they weren't satisfied with them. And so I think that's an important learning too, is if you just looked at the sales data, you'd say, oh look, everything's great. You know, they're buying our products. The problem was because they had such low care. For the product, they were very likely to switch. Our product was interchangeable with our competitors. It's just that, product segment had happened to be very popular, so everybody was doing pretty well. But once you started to actually talk to people about, their experience with these products, it was just very clear that it was very low consideration and, you know, and that's a very tenuous position to be in as a brand. So, to your original question, yes, we absolutely spent, a good amount of time at the front end validating whether or not this customer actually existed. And it was a very fortunate situation. I had the freedom to come back with no as the answer. But it is often the case where the answer is presupposed at the outset. But in this case, um, it was nascent enough and unclear enough that, I was given the,, the freedom to come back with a null result. And that would be okay. Um, you know,, in this case though these initial groups found that it was a real, consumer and a real opportunity, and then that's what led to then the subsequent rounds where we tried to narrow in on Okay. Then specifically is the product opportunity with this new population.
Joachim:So let's get back to process. We we're digging a little bit around and how the process works out for you. But you mentioned earlier on. The brief, and it sounds like that becomes the anchoring piece of work that allows you to navigate all of this complexity. So can you walk us through that process and, how do you even start something like that?
Ernest:Yeah. Yeah. And um,, that is really the one deliverable that a product manager has, at least in my experience. designers, it's pretty easy. They design the thing, engineers, make it work and, make it makeable. so these other roles are, it's pretty clear to explain what it is you do as a product manager. It's very difficult because no one ever sees your product, your work product, which is the brief, because that's always held very closely. For me, my favorite. Touchstone when it comes to briefing is a quote from David Ogilvy. I referenced him I think in our, either the last episode or two episodes. the quote about, using data as a trunker, uses a lamppost for support rather than illumination. He's full of great quotes. David Ogilvy. He also has a great quote about, briefing and he said, give me the freedom of a tight brief. And it was a very intentionally, double entendre. He's a funny guy, but, it says so much that little statement one I. It speaks to the importance of constraints, which is a topic we've talked about a lot. You know, he says, give me the freedom of a tight brief because that, for a domain expert that's so important to understand what is the space I can operate in and be successful. If that's so too broad, then it just becomes incredibly difficult to come up with a a meaningful solution. another quote that comes to mind in this space is from Duke Ellington, the jazz musician who said, I don't need time. I need a deadline. same idea of the importance of constraints. So that's a really big part of the role that the brief plays is to put these guardrails around that question that your domain experts are trying to answer. so that's one key part of it. In terms of how you get started, I think I've been lucky as well in that I've been in. Situations where I was given a lot of freedom around the form of the brief. I think there are places where the brief is much more regimented. in all the situations I've been in, we've been given a lot of freedom to make the brief relevant to the project and the team that you're working with. So for me, I would always start with that focus on the customer, understanding who the customer is, and then really building on that with what is the need that they have that we can solve for. And that's a really important question too. I didn't touch on that at the front end. But in addition to understanding the need that they have, that's also how can we uniquely. Respond to that need, based on our values as a brand, and our capabilities as an organization. because if you're just gonna make a me too product, then what's the point, right? So that's another key component that's gonna be very important to your team. So I'd say those are the three things I've always really focused on. Who's the customer? What's their need? How can we uniquely address that need? And something I've also always tried to do, and it's not always possible, but I, I feel like it's really, really important if you can do it, is to pull in your domain expert teammates before you've got anything written down, so that they can be part of that process. It's still your responsibility as the product manager to document all of that and to actually put the pieces together. But, All of the most successful programs I've been part of the, my teammates, across these other domains have been part of that briefing process. And I think that's just important because there's nothing like being in the room when you hear that insight come through for you to really believe it and take it in, and obviously that's part of your job as a product manager as well to be persuasive in getting those insights across. But, um, if you can, getting that team together to encounter those insights together, it can be incredibly powerful. Getting to your question again about how do you find what's real. I guess that's a big part of it is just this sort of pattern matching, like, do you start to see things come up more than once? A few times then, you know, you get the sense that, okay, this isn't just a, a pure edge case, you know,, there is something to this. And then I think what's important too is making the effort to go that one step further, to not just understand what that thing might be at a surface level, but to understand as much as you can, what's driving that, the why behind that thing you're seeing. I know I'm being somewhat vague, but I guess maybe that example of, that Polar bowl thing we did at We Kennedy, something I could talk about publicly where, as I mentioned, we saw this behavior of, co-viewing or people viewing things and also being online at the same time. And at that time that was a, a fairly new behavior. but as we dug into it, we saw that. Okay. It's not just a super niche thing, even though it's somewhat new, the adoption is quickly spreading. and getting into the why behind it, there was this desire to have a sense of connection. Even back then, 2011 I think it was. Even back then. People were consuming media, in a distributed fashion, but they still wanted that sense of being around the campfire. And so they were replicating that through digital tools. And then we understood that okay, then that does, connect really well with what our client Coke is trying to achieve around this big, social event of the Super Bowl. So that does feel like a meaningful opportunity, not just something on the surface, that, might be exciting and shiny right now, but isn't gonna be lasting. It's all very touchy feely, I guess, but that's, always how I've done it. it's just kind a, a, process of taking in a lot of data. So that you can start to do that pattern matching and then where you see gaps coming up with experiments, essentially to try to answer those specific questions, fill those specific gaps, distilling that down, as ruthlessly as you can because I think that's one of the hardest things, at least for me.'cause you get so enmeshed in this question and there's so many interesting facets to it. and you want to document it all, but you have to then. Take the time to apply judgment and say, okay, of these 12 things that are really interesting, can I get it down to three that are the most compelling, are the most relevant to our task at hand, so that I can enable our, my domain expert teammates to focus their efforts in a way that's gonna, maximize their likelihood of success. And that is really a big part of the product manager's job.'cause you can bring those teammates with you on these sessions and that's awesome. But then ultimately, in terms of. Applying that judgment towards what's the most important, those few things that are really vital. I think that's a huge part of the product manager's job to, to distill all that down into then that one highly digestible document, that whole team can rally around over the course of a project which could last, multiple years.
Joachim:Yeah, more time invested in a problem actually leads to a distillation, as you said, and the ability to focus on the essential pieces as opposed to everything. Really when you've really done your research, you're able to say, look, this is the, this is everything, but here's the distillation and the essence of it. The brief and the sequencing of events feels, pretty natural, right? You start with a customer and you build out from that. Have you ever had a situation where you actually had one of your specialists come in and say, oh, I've got this really funky cool thing that I figured out, and we should make something with this, whatever that may be.
Ernest:Yeah, that's a great observation and I've definitely seen that and I think that's pretty common. And I think you see that a lot in, in the digital world as well, especially from companies that are more engineering led. it might just be, Hey, here's this cool thing we could do, what can we make from this? And, sometimes that can succeed. I've found that it's often really a struggle. And, at that point, I'd say in those instances, it's just kind of a crapshoot as to whether that ultimate product is going to be successful or not. sometimes you might get lucky and you might be able to find an intersection between that kind of gadget and or genuine customer need, but it really is a bit of a crapshoot. I, I've found that your likelihood of success is, in my experience, much greater if you start from a customer problem. Although one, offshoot of that, I guess would be, I was involved in a project where it started out, focused on. A cus a customer problem to solve a customer need. But the way that the team tried to solve it was by reasoning, by analogy, uh, sort of, um, hey, this is how we've always tried to address this need, so let's make it X percent better. Like that speeds and feeds approach that we talked about a little while back. which I think is also very common. Okay, let's take this one attribute and make it X percent better. and that led to an un unsuccessful outcome, because it turned out that actually wasn't a meaningful attribute. It's just one that we, clung onto because it's something that we could change. we had the levers to affect that, but one of the folks on the team had the wisdom after that failure. To step back and say, okay, what,, what are the kind of first principles here? There is this genuine need, so what are the things that the customer needs to satisfy that need? taking any of those kind of previous solutions out off the table. Getting at the core science, in this case, it was a science based solution, the science behind it. And that led us to a really powerful solution that uh, ended up enabling a very successful product. So,, it was rooted in a technology, but that technology was enabled by someone, looking at the customer problem in a, what people would call a first principles foundational sort of way. I think that's a hybrid example where. Technology enabled the ultimate output, the ultimate product that was successful, but only because it was rooted in, a fundamental need. And then also that example of where reasoning by analogy got us to a unsuccessful outcome as well.
Joachim:Mm-Hmm. Yeah. So how do you, we've talked about the brief being the thing, and at the front end you described a little bit more, almost like cheerleader role that you're trying to rally everyone into the same terrain. How does that play out? Now, you've done the brief, everyone's excited, and then it gets difficult. Now the work starts and you, it's the grind. And you said some of these projects will stretch over many years. How do you stay connected to that process and how do you keep everyone happy and excited about what it is that you're doing?
Ernest:Right. That's a another great question and that this topic is why I, um, recommended that, uh,, The greatest Night in Pop Netflix documentary, a couple of episodes ago.'cause it really encapsulated that aspect of the product manager role of kind of. Keeping people excited and engaged, those experts you're dealing with. it, there's a great, example in that documentary where, you know, in, in that case it was very, distilled because they had one night to record the song. And, this room full of the vests, pop artists in the world. But, a few hours in, I think it was Stevie Wonders said, I think we should have some Swahili in the song, Swahili lyrics because it's about the world and we're, it's about supporting, kids in Africa who are starving. I think it was in Ethiopia. The project was on a precipice. they could have really gone off the rails there where they would've had to write new lyrics. And someone observed that actually they don't speak Swahili
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:in country. but it wasn't just that, it was also okay, what is it that you were trying to do, Stevie? Like, what is it, what's outcome that you want to get to? And is there another way that we can satisfy that? So I just thought that was such a great example of what you have to do as a product manager over the course of a a project. These sorts of things are gonna come up where something happens. Maybe it's just something within the organization, within the marketplace. So. You always have to be open to these new inputs and be aware of how they might impact the project. Um, and continue to kind of be open-minded in your interpretation of, okay, are we still, is this still the right question to solve? Uh, are these still the right constraints to be working around? Um, and at the same time, like you're saying, you really do have to be a cheerleader, make people continue to feel that this thing that they're working on is meaningful, that they're working against the right set of questions. Um, and, continuing to check that as new information comes in. Um, and I'm just trying to think if there's anything, you know, specific advice I could give around this.
Joachim:Yeah. Do you have any hacks? Do you do very cheerleader things like get some music going, get a movie going and get vibes happening? Or is it very much just, Hey guys, let's, let's remind ourselves about the, the essentials and remember the brief and take it from there.
Ernest:I think it is really important to all, for me, at least in my experience, it's always been vital to be honest with your team. I've seen instances where, you know, some other product managers have been, you know, manufactured, things to get their team going in the direction that they felt they needed to go in. But
Joachim:mm-Hmm.
Ernest:I just think that that's never a good thing. I mean, um, so I think always being honest is vital. And then I guess you have to show that you believe in these things you're saying, which sound, you know, patently obvious, but, um, I can think of some examples where I was really performative in illustrating that I believed. These things that, um, I had documented in the brief and that I had continued to share with the team in a way that, um, put me at risk. There were times where kind of like a movie type situation, I said basically, you know,, it's, it's this or nothing you know, and, and, um, you know,, fire me if you want to, but it's got, this is what our customer's telling us. So we're not gonna pretend that's not the case because it's gonna be more convenient for whatever the corporate narrative is at that moment. I think that that, you know, is risky, right? You know,, you could get fired. That's always possibility, but it also shows your team that you genuinely believe in these things that you're talking about.'cause if you don't believe it, then why should they believe it? Right? So showing them that it's, this is not just words on a page. But it's something that you really believe in. And I, I do think that sometimes, especially in the context of a bigger company, sometimes you do kind of have to go over the top with that a little bit to, make a point. Because it can be very easy to lose that momentum, just like in that greatest night and pop, you know, that's, I think your, one of your biggest enemies is losing momentum, losing belief, uh, around that idea. Because like we talked about last week with, uh, the quote from Creativity Inc. With, uh, Ed Catmull talking about how fragile ideas are, uh, are, you know, like. It's, it's, it's not, you know, especially in the early stages, it's just words that you've said to each other. You know, at that point when you don't have anything concrete, um, you really have to marshal your energy towards keeping people engaged, keeping them believing that this is worth working on. Um, uh, so that they're willing to invest their very valuable time and energy and expertise against that problem. So, um, I, you know, there is a bit of cheerleading in that and, um, showing that you have skin in the game and you genuinely believe these things that you're saying. I can think of an example where I had to work on a project where it was just a, a mandate from the CEO and I didn't believe in it, and it showed, and the project was unsuccessful. And I, I often think about that. I feel I, I still feel guilty about that,
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:I could have done a better job because. If I took the time to dig into it, there was something authentic in that, in the CEO's insight. Um, the process wasn't great, you know, to have the CEO just dictate that, Hey, you, you've gotta do this, but I should have responded in a more adult way, I guess. uh, just say, Hey, is there something to this? And then recognize that there was, and then built a brief around that genuine thing versus, Hey, the CEO says we have to do this, so we have to do this.'cause no you know, no one's gonna get excited about that.
Joachim:that's a really interesting example actually because it's another form of constraint, right? You can take it as. An order, or you can take it as this is the sandbox that I want you guys to operate in and now. It's your job to find that essence. because also then linking back to what you were saying, when you find that essence that you believe in, then it's easy to build everything around that, as you were describing. And cheerleading becomes natural because you've found that essential question. So that's a really important lesson in general, right? To, to flip something that feels like an order, because it is, it is an order. Like, you know that, but in your mind you have to play it as well, okay, here's this specific kind of crappy sandbox you've given me. but I'll try my best to do something with that. And in that, the constraint and innovation can sometimes emerge. So actually following on. From this conversation about a cheerleader and a, a signal inges, you were right. Ernest, you, you said it, you're a generalist. You're covering a lot of things. Doesn't this lead to many misunderstandings about what your role actually is? So are there some things that people get wrong commonly about what you do in, in the corporation?
Ernest:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, um, I've, no one in my family understands what I do to this day. You kind of impossible to explain it. I think too, that. When people hear marketing as in product marketing, automatically they think advertising. And, that is one expression of marketing. But I think, people don't recognize that there's so many, uh, different kinds of marketing. there's the advertising, which is the bit that we see, but then there's product marketing, which is marketing towards the creation of products. Um, that, you know, at a company like Nike, there's sports marketing, so there's a, direct marketing, blah, blah, blah. There's a gazillion different types of marketing. So that's another, I think, common error is just when you hear someone say they're a product manager or product marketer, you think that they do advertising, a challenge across. Industries pretty broadly is that this role isn't particularly well defined. It because can be quite different at different companies. Uh, like as I've heard, a product manager at Proctor and Gamble is very different than a product manager at say, Nike. which is also then very different from a product manager at say Google. so unlike say, you know, the industrial design where you can, Pretty well plug and play across companies in that role for product marketing slash product management, I think, um, there's a little bit more specificity, um, at the very least to industry, if not, um, beyond that. So I'd say that's a, a challenge. Someone at a different company might have a very different set of expectations around what a product manager is, and that's just because that's how product managers, that role was defined within that company. So that's, maybe a misunderstanding, but also a misunderstanding based in fact, uh, that that's pretty common. And I think a, a challenge associated with that is that oftentimes there isn't necessarily, um, a clear career path for a product manager either in that, what does that lead up into? I guess, you know, in, in a lot of these domain expertise type functions, there's a, you know, fairly clear path. You start out as a junior, you know, mid-level, then senior and et cetera, and then you maybe manage a group. Um, but in the product management world, it's, it's a little bit less clearly defined. Um, at least in my experience, although I think that's starting to change. I think, um, you know, when I started at Nike, uh, as a product manager, I mean, the funny thing is when I started in that role, I'd never even heard of it. I didn't know that that role Um, and as to the best of my knowledge, there were no. You know, university programs teaching product management. But now there are, um, I know at the University, university of Oregon, they have a, a pretty well known program around product management. So, you know, it's starting to become better. Understood. A little bit more, um, defined and codified for good and for ill, I think. Um, but that I think continues to be a little bit of a challenge as well, just that, uh, different companies have defined the role in different ways based on their need.
Joachim:Yeah. Well now that you've touched on a little bit on education and career path and the fact that you didn't know that this role even existed, how did you get into all of this in the first place? And then maybe along the way, pepper in some advice that you might, wanna throw in there about what to avoid or what to do and, how you would approach that career path.
Ernest:Yeah, I, and I, I think we touched on this some episodes back at some point as well where I mentioned, I got my start doing web design, but our, yeah, I co-founded this company called 37 Signals, and our approach to web design was looking back now, treating websites as products. And, you know, that led to the type of clients that we wanted to work with, but also the, the way we expressed design was very functional. So I guess it was something that, um,, an approach that I always had in that the reason we had that functional approach to design is that we were very interested in solving problems, solving our clients' problems. And it just so happened that our vehicle for that was design and web design. What led me into that role at Nike was that, I had this affinity for sneakers, and I started this website called Kicksology.net, where I reviewed basketball shoes. And what I came to learn came to understand later is that being a product reviewer is very, adjacent to being a product manager. It's, it's just at a different stage. You know, you talked about the tool they used at Amazon of, the press release, PR FAQ. Right. so you can imagine as a product manager, you can almost think about the fact, the idea that you're writing the review for the product before it's actually been made. So what, what would you want a reviewer to say about it? So, you know, it turned out that that experience of doing product reviews was very, very helpful. In, becoming a, a product manager, it gave me a lot of the tools I needed in terms of thinking about the customer, thinking about their needs and how they might perceive a product. I, I, I was lucky in that I really backed into it. In terms of, advice I would give. Now there are programs, so you could look at schools that have programs in product marketing, product management. Um, There are some adjacent roles as well. Sociology would be one role in terms of the product marketing, the insight gathering aspect of it, that would be really useful to have that grounding. I mean there's a lot of ways into it as well. Like even say data science becoming much more relevant now being, comfortable working with big data sets and mining those to get insights. That could be a way into it as well, especially for, more of a tech driven company. But I think the, the main thing is do you have a love of product that's really at the core of it and. And I think you, you'll know fairly early on whether you have the capacity to be a domain expert. You know, I recognized pretty early on that I, I'm not a designer. I did web design, but even when I was doing it, I knew that this wasn't what I, what I really wanted to do. I wanted to solve problems. You know, knowing those things, I came to realize that this role really is the perfect role for me. That being that generalist, that is that point of intersection for these experts and enabling them to successfully apply their expertise towards solving a problem. I feel so fortunate that that role exists, but now having done it for some time, I can see why it's so vital, because these other roles have so many other responsibilities. They need that, that person, that can be that voice of the customer, and and advocate for them over the course of, a project. So I'd say, you know, ask yourself that. Do you love product? and then one other thing I guess I'd say is in terms of finding opportunities in industry, I. one thing that was very helpful for me was having a vehicle to show, show my work essentially, you know, designers have portfolios. As a programmer you can have examples of code. and for me it was Kicksology, that website that, that showed that I had this product Affinity. I didn't make the site with the intention of getting a job as a product manager. Like I said, I didn't even know what it was, but it just was a way to show that I had this affinity for product, product and had, I guess the capacity to draw insight out of. A deep investigation of product, uh, and, you know, whatever form that takes for you, I think that is really important.'cause you know, if you think for a second about the person who's on the other end and hiring you for that position, they're getting dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands of resumes. How can you show that you actually, that those things that are on your resume are true? That you know, what you are talking about when it comes to product, that you have an ability to, pull insights out of, lots of data, lots of information. So having some mechanism to show that I think is, is even more important now than it was when I started back in the day.
Joachim:That's interesting. I guess that would also include, the video review, the, the YouTube channel, and all of these media that you can use now to highlight your expertise, If someone sees your website or the presence that your channel has had and it, you have been consistently working on this it lends a lot of weight and strength to your case
Ernest:yeah, and I'm certainly not the only example of that. I think there's some great examples in the tech world, like, I forget his last name, but there was a guy who started a website called Anand Tech, where he analyzed microprocessor architectures and just did such a great job of it. He was, eventually hired by Apple and he still, I believe he still works at Apple, in their processor design group. And then, uh,, another example is, um, I think his name is Dieter Bohn. He was, at the Verge, the website that is about technology and I think he focused a lot on product reviews. And he was hired by Google as a, I believe, as a product manager. So, you know, there's a really good history of this. That never would've happened were it not for, having some, them having some vehicle to kind of show their work.
Joachim:Yeah. Actually to, not to continually add to this list, but there are, it is a long list, but I've seen, a YouTube channel by Dummy Lee, who is an architect, really take off, I think she has over a million subscribers. And she just talks about architecture, response to architecture that's emerging in designs and has a strong perspective on those things. I think as a result of that channel, she got financial independence and was able to start her own architecture practice. So again, think there's still value in showing that you care about this, about your profession. About, in your case, you were talking about caring about product.
Ernest:I get one last thing I'd say too is to be honest, which again might sound obvious, but that was really vital to me getting my job at Nike was that I was willing, in my interview, I was being, I was willing to be honest, in my answers to the questions that were asked about their product. I was critical because that was my honest experience and I was fortunate in that the person who hired me was looking for someone who'd bring an honest outsider's perspective to his team. If that person didn't want honesty, then I don't think you'd wanna work in that sort of environment where, your boss wants you to be dishonest. So I don't think that there's a downside to being honest. in my own experience, have found consistently that for your benefit and then to increase your likelihood of success, it's, it's just really a good thing to be honest with yourself and, with your colleagues.
Joachim:I like that. That's a very nice piece of, advice I was gonna ask. If you could go back in time, what would you say to yourself, but it feels like that's what you would say to yourself, or is that not true? Would you say something else to your younger version?
Ernest:Well. I guess I'm, I'm lucky in that that was something I always did. so that was kind of baked in. Um, the one thing I would say to my, my younger self in the way of advice is, um, I know I'm gonna sound like a Steve Chops groupie, and I guess maybe I am, but it's, it's something he said, uh, I again, back in his next days, kind of in his time in the wilderness, but, I'm gonna maybe paraphrase it a little bit, but he said something along, along the lines of everything around you that you call life was made by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. And the minute you understand that, that you can poke life and actually something's gonna pop out of the other side, that you can change it and mold it. once you've learned that. You'll wanna change life and make it better. And the reason I would share that is I think I spent a lot of my life, being too willing to defer to authority and, you know, assume that others were smarter. And so they must, you know, know the answers. But, you know, with some time and perspective, I've come to realize that this observation on Steve Jobs part is very true. And everything around us has been made by people who are, you know, maybe smarter in certain domains than, than you might be, but overall, you know, are as smart as you are or you're as smart as them. So, you know, if you see, you feel like something's not quite right about something. That's good. You know, act on that. don't just be willing to take things at face value. I, I, you know, I do that now, but I, I, I do wish I had started that earlier.
Joachim:That's a great way to end this conversation. Thank you so much, Ernest.
Ernest:My pleasure. Thanks so much for the grilling. It was, really fun conversation. But, now that you know what a product manager is, hopefully, we wanna hear from you. Do you have any follow up questions that you'd like me to address? are you a product manager and do you disagree with any of of my perspectives? We genuinely wanna know. So please share your thoughts at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com. Now let's move on to our recommendations of the week. Joachim, what has you excited this week? I.
Joachim:I am lucky enough that I can build off the last thing that you talked about, which was that quotation that, life is made up of things by people that were no smarter than you. That has struck a chord with me. connected to an old documentary series from the BBC called Connections Hosted by James Burke. it's available on YouTube. We'll put that in the show notes. I'm working my way through it very slowly, because it's a really deep, deep TV show. but the key idea in it is exactly that notion that the way things happen in this world, happen because people are able to build on what everyone else has built before them. So his argument at the end of his first episode he says, I think it's very likely that any one of us had we been in the same position, the same place in the same time, we would've probably also stumbled on the same solutions that others have come on. So connections as a documentary says that really tries to go through history and instead of creating a. Big human being story, A singular person that fixes everything. He's trying to show that a person exists in a context and that context feeds them and then they can innovate from that. I think that show really just captures so much of the things we've been talking about in general in this show, but also the philosophy of collaboration and humility in the face of the fact that, you know, we are able to do things now because we're standing on everyone else's contributions, and therefore we'll be able to make the next leap. So that's my recommendation. I'm gonna be on the same journey as everyone else. If you start watching. I'm still on episode three. They cover everything. He jumps through time and all kinds of stuff, but it's very, very enjoyable.
Ernest:Oh, that's fantastic that it's on YouTube.
Joachim:Thankfully, I think it's because it's so old. No one cares. But actually in other news, I recently saw that the BBC will be making a new version of the show. So James Burke will be returning to create an updated version of connections. Not that it really needs the update, but I think there's a lot of stuff that's happened since the seventies, obviously, in terms of technology. He thinks the time is ripe to revisit this question of how do we get to the complexity of the modern world.
Ernest:Is this the show where there's that incredible opening sequence where the presenter walks into frame and he's in front of this kind of nature scene, but it turns out it's like Cape Canaveral and then the, the rocket launches as he's talking.
Joachim:Yeah, that's the
Ernest:amazing. I can't wait it out. This is a bit of a sidebar, but, I think in the US we tend to think of presenters as being a pretty low skill role. But I had a chance at a PR event in London. It was hosted by a professional presenter, who worked for one of the big networks, in the uk. And it was so impressive to see how. Skilled, they were at that job of being a presenter. It really gave me a new appreciation for, what a, a talent. But the great thing, it wasn't just about talent. It was clear that they had spent a huge amount of time preparing, but enough time that when it came time for the event, it just seemed effortless. So that was really cool to see. I think there's so much of a culture of that in the, in the uk that there isn't, um, in the us
Joachim:it is the benefit. I'm gonna sound like a little socialist here, but it's the benefit of having a healthy public broadcasting service. maybe it's not as healthy as it used to be, but it definitely was founded with these ideals in mind that you give people the resources and the time and they can educate and entertain at the same time.
Ernest:That's awesome. I'll definitely check that one out. on my end I'm gonna cheat a little bit. I actually have two. the first is directly related to our topic. I, it's something I come back to constantly. Again, it's a Steve Jobs example, but it's this incredible video internal. It was meant to be internal to next only video from 1991, I believe. And we'll provide a link in the show notes. There's a version of it on YouTube where Steve Jobs is taking. I think it's meant for next Salesforce across the country, is why they prerecorded it. He's taking them through the plan for next, you know, he. He starts with an overview of their target market, who their customers and pers prospective customers are. He gives an indication of the size of that customer opportunity, and then he goes into a discussion of what their needs are. and then finally talks about how next is uniquely positioned to deliver on those needs in a way that the other competitors in their market, you know, wouldn't be able to. and so it just beautifully encapsulates what a product manager does, in I think the clearest way I've ever seen, you know, that was actually publicly available. And it, it speaks to, I think, something that I've observed as well in that. The founder at a small startup is typically a product manager. You know, oftentimes if it's product based startup, that founder is somebody who's passionate about that product or service that they're trying to create, becomes very well versed in the customer, their needs, et cetera. And, you know, Steve Jobs is very much playing that role. He was at that point CEO of next, and he was just the world's best product marketer, product manager. Uh, he really understood the needs of their customers, and it comes through there. I think as you get bigger, um, you know, you then find that you maybe need this distinct role called product manager, but at a, you know, kind of start a phase that. Founders often playing that role of product managers. So that's the first one. The next one I thought, you know, in these last few episodes I've recommended like movies and other things, and I thought, you know, given our focus, I should probably recommend the product. Um, so I'm gonna recommend a kind of an esoteric product. It's a, a speaker, a wireless speaker from a company called Name NAIM and we'll provide a link in the show notes to this stuff. It's the name muso two and, uh, I wanted to highlight it because it is such an opinionated product. Um, it, it really. Shouldn't exist probably, uh, you terms of like, you know, if you're trying to create a product that was successful, it would not be this. Uh, and so I love that it exists and that it expresses such a distinct point of view. Um, and I, I almost feel like it was made for me. I, I, I'm like, I can't imagine, are there enough people like me that would be willing to buy this thing, that it's, it's viable. But, uh, fortunately it seems that there are. Um, but it's, uh, technically it's a stereo speaker, but it's in one box and the speakers are, you know, so close that, you know, practically speaking, it's a single speaker, uh, even though it's made up of multiple individual speaker units. Um, and yet it costs, it, it originally cost$1,800 us, it's now come down to about 1300 to$1,400, depending on the configuration. Um. And if you look at the specs, you might again say, why does this thing exist? But if you look at the reviews, what you'll see, and we'll provide a link to a great review by a guy named Andrew Robinson. What you'll hear consistently is that it just is a joyful product. It makes it fun to listen to music again. Um, and I've absolutely found that to be the case. I'm not an audio file, um, but I, I love music and I have a, a stereo pair of the original home pods, which are, are pretty good. Uh, and I've listened to the same track side by side between them. And I've had that same experience where out of the name, the music just sounds more. Joyful more. something there that is missing in the home pod version of it. It's, it's really, really interesting. I can't, I don't have language to describe it, I thought it was a great example. One'cause it's a beautiful product, but also, I think not every product has to appeal to billions of people. I think, especially for younger folks and particularly in the digital space, there's very much a bias towards scale. You know, like, Oh, I wanna work on things that are gonna reach billions of people. And, you know, hey that's, I can understand why that is, but there can be, I think, great value in these, uh, more intimate products as well. this Naim Muso might not reach billions of people, but for the people who it does reach, it creates this very special connection. Um, and I really think. There's a lot of opportunity for products like that more and more. Um, and so that was why I wanted to highlight that one as well. It's, I think, just a really special product. Um, and, uh, I hope that we will see more products like that, um, in the future.
Joachim:I like that it also is connected to next, in some ways in my mind because, everyone's obsessed with scale. Next was considered to be somewhat a low point for Steve Jobs, but when you actually look at the machine, it's a fantastic machine. The design of it, the case, the logo for next is fantastic. The packaging, all of these hallmarks of Apple are already in there, and it is a, a really special machine. I actually saw one in the science museum in London just recently, and I was just struck by how utilitarian yet beautiful the machine looked. We'll put a link to the Wiki page that you can see one of these machines, but they're, they're so stripped down and focused on being this professional workstation, and then that was the target group. And because it didn't sell as many as a plastic colorful iMac, people think, well, that was Steve Jobs low point, his nadir.. Next was always kind of, yeah, no one cared about those things, but Tim Berners Lee cared, had he built the internet on the thing, you know, the, world wide web comes from that. It doesn't need to have the full scale to be still something special. It's not meant for everyone, and not to be elitist, but it's only gonna appeal to so many people and that's important and it should exist, so, That's cool. I love these recommendations. They're great Alice you for sharing.
Ernest:No, no, not at all. What you said about the next cube reminds me a bit too of something else. When jobs was back at Apple, he, I think he was, introducing the IG four Cube, or some other product, and he showed the bottom of it and he said, the bottom of arts is better looking than the front of theirs. And I, I felt the same about the name Musso too. The back has this just incredibly beautiful heat sink that runs all along the back of it, and so much so that I actually. For a minute thought, is there a way that I could put this backside out?
Joachim:backside,
Ernest:sense for a speaker, but it's it's so, it communicates something that these people were willing to put so much effort into the back of this thing. You know, it's, it just speaks to you across time and space in a way that I think the only other thing that does that is art. I know, you know, maybe sounds kind of highfalutin, but um, man, there is something special in that. well, alright, I think that does it for us. Uh, thank you so much for joining us here at Learn Make Learn. As I mentioned, we want to hear from you, so please send any questions or feedback to learn, make learn@gmail.com and tell your friends about us. For our next episode, we're going to tackle a topic suggested by Kieran, a friend and colleague. He asked us to discuss the tension between traditional in-car user experience platforms versus third party platforms like Apple's CarPlay or Google's Android Auto that Subsume built in systems with their own interfaces. This topic feels particularly timely given that Rivian, which may be the most important competitor to Tesla in the EV category, is on the verge of revealing a new, smaller model called to R two that many expect to be priced to reach a mass audience. Now Tesla and Rivian may not agree on much, but neither of these EV pioneers supports either CarPlay or Android Auto. And if you spend much time in online car forms like you'll, him and I both do,, you'll, you'll see that this is a subject of fierce debate. So is this a shortsighted move that ultimately hurts these brands as they seek broader adoption? Or is this insistence on owning their relationship with their customers, including through their infotainment platforms, a wise decision that will pay dividends in the long run? We'll dive into this fray and share our own perspectives on this topic. On the next Learn, make, learn.
