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Episode 099
The discussion on product leadership emphasized its evolving nature and the need for clear understanding and execution. Beks Yelland and Therese Stowell highlighted that while product leadership is a mature discipline, its value is not always recognized by senior executives. They stressed the importance of product leaders in driving strategy, fostering cross-functional collaboration, and ensuring teams are set up for success. They also discussed the challenges of maintaining product leadership roles during economic downturns, noting that while it's cost-effective to cut senior roles, it can be detrimental to long-term success. They advised junior product managers to seek clarity and challenge leadership when necessary, and to provide tangible examples of product leadership's impact.
RESOURCES
Bek's Bio:
Beks is an experienced pioneer in product management, having been in the field long before it became mainstream. With a diverse background across multiple domains and tech stacks, she's always sought innovation, recently focusing on Climate and HealthTech. As a strong advocate for psychological safety in product teams, Beks addresses issues like imposter syndrome and mental well-being. She leads the Product Mind community and founded the Female Product Lead community, aimed at empowering female product leaders of today and tomorrow through collaborative events that foster support, growth, and development in their careers.
Therese's Bio:
Therese Stowell is a product leader with experience in digital identity, AI, biometrics, and developer platforms, most recently as VP Product at Onfido. Her unconventional career path includes an art career, founding a social enterprise, and an engineering stint at Microsoft where she wrote the command line in Windows. She is passionate about growing the next generation of product leaders and is a bit of a process geek.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro 00:00
Music. Welcome to productvoices, a podcast where we share valuable insights and useful resources to help us all be great in product management. Visit the show's website to access the resources discussed on the show. Find more information on our fabulous guests, or to submit your product management question to be answered on our special Q and A episodes. That's all@productvoices.com and be sure to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform now. Here's our host, JJ Rorie, CEO of great product management.
JJ 00:36
Hello and welcome to productvoices. Today's topic is about product leadership. Product leadership as a discipline, specifically, and all of the all of the nuances that come from that. I've got a an amazing couple of folks here to help me, kind of harsh through this and think through product leadership. What it looks like in today's world. Are we doing it well? Are we not doing it so well? What can we do better? And in what environments is it succeeding in the most, in the best way possible? So with me today, I've got Beks Yellen and three stole Beks is an experienced pioneer in product management, having been in the field before it became mainstream. Me too. She has worked in many different domains and tech stacks. She's most recently been in climate and health tech. She is a strong advocate for psychological safety and product teams, one of my favorite things that Beks does. She's a co founder of the product mind community, and she founded the female product lead community aimed at empowering female product leaders. Therese is a product leader with experience in digital identity, AI biometrics and development platforms, most recently as VP of product at oddfito. Our unconventional career path includes an art career very cool founding a social enterprise and an engineering stint at Microsoft where she wrote the command line in Windows three specs. Thank you so much for being here for this conversation. I'm looking forward to getting your insights and to hear what you think about this topic. Glad to
Beks 02:16
be here. JJ,
Therese 02:17
thanks for having me looking forward to it. Okay,
JJ 02:20
so product leadership as a discipline, right? We in product management, which has grown up over the last couple of decades, I like to say, into what should be an adult. I'm not quite sure all aspects or adult like at this point, but product leadership isn't always understood in my experience from other leaders and from the organization. And so I like to think of it, and I like the topic of this conversation as product leadership, being a discipline, being a craft, or a part of the craft of product management. So here's my question to you and Therese. I'll give this to you first. Have we nailed product leadership yet? Do senior executives around us, right? Our peers understand what to expect from a product leader, a VP of product, CPO, etc?
Therese 03:17
Yeah. So two part question, I think the first point to, you know, is it a grown up discipline product and product leadership. I think so. I think it's, you know, I think we pretty much understand what the job is, driving product strategy and execution in line with company strategy. Obviously, there's a lot that goes into that hiring, building great teams, cross functional collaboration, ensuring the right market and customer signals, etc, etc. So that's the first part of the question. The second part, do other folks understand that discipline definitely not always, and actually, and even when they do. I've also seen people don't want to cede that kind of control as product being the center of the business to the product team.
JJ 04:11
Yeah, that actually, I see that a lot as well. I think let's dig into that in a minute. But Beks, what thoughts do you have on that is product leadership as a discipline and then maturity level of
Beks 04:21
it. Yeah, so one of the reasons why I was really keen to have this conversation is because I'm absolutely respect three is where she's come from on her career. But I knew from day one that we were going to have different opinions about this particular topic, which is why we came to you. I fundamentally disagree with that. I honestly do. I think yes, you might in an echo chamber of sorts, meet other product leaders who do it the same way as you. And I agree with everything you said, By the way, like that is absolutely you nailed it. Like that is absolutely what a product leader should and could do. But I think the problem that we have is lots of people are given the role of product leadership and. They possibly haven't grown up through the product discipline, and so they might be stumbling over things like growth or commercial or, you know, thinking it's more technically focused than maybe other people might think, and don't really pick up the baton in the right way, or take the lion's share of the right things in the C suite that they should be taking, and there's going to be friction and toxicity in the fact that the team are then looking up at that person asking, you know, where's the leadership? Where's the disciplinary leadership, where's the you know, why aren't you showing us the way how to deliver on the company strategy or the product, the company vision. Your job as a product leader is to help us to understand how we get there. What is the strategy? And I think people forget what strategy means and what it's for, and they think it's synonymous with vision. And I think that's where things just under fundamentally get unstuck if you've got people who aren't doing the job in the right way. And I think that happens, unfortunately, more often than not. And because of that, you have disenfranchised product teams. You have harder to convince I've gone into roles where I followed in the footsteps of someone who's done it in a slightly odd way, and it's been an absolute uphill struggle to be able to then win the exec team back, or the rest of the all back, because they are out of love of product as a discipline, product management as a discipline, and product leadership as a discipline. So I think right early on, I think we are possibly coming at it from a different point of view. I don't know if you disagree with that. Actually, I'd be really interested to know Therese. Therese, if you disagree with that, oh,
Therese 06:47
I actually think we completely agree. So. So if you take it as three parts, the first part being, do we as a community understand what good looks like? Yeah, I think we do. Are there people in the C suite in other parts of the business who saw who understand or don't understand what good looks like? Yes. Um, then are the people in those product leadership roles, and I think this is your point, um, doing best practice. Completely agree best practice in that role is, sadly, quite rare, and I think that ends up, you know, giving product management a bad name in some cases, which then, you know, as you were talking about, puts the team in a bad position, means that leaders coming in afterwards have a lot of cleanup and remediation to do around, what is the value of product management and what does good look like, for sure. So actually, I think we, we are on the same page.
JJ 07:49
So I want to dig a little bit here in the what what good looks like, because I think folks who have been in product roles. And Becky brought up a good point of some product leaders have not been in product roles before, and they become leaders of that domain. And there, I think that's a whole other conversation and and episode. So again, you can come back, yeah, but for, for, for those of us who aren't necessarily on the page of the community and the ancillary peers and stakeholders understand what good looks like. And I think I'm in that, in that, that category, in other words, I'm not sure we know what good looks like. I think the three of us know what we think. I think there's a lot of folks out there that that have the same idea, but I don't think, generally speaking, we yet know what good product looks like, short even good product organizations look like, or good product leadership. So let's dig there a little bit. I want to ask you both to tell me what you think good looks like, and good meaning, literally doesn't have to be best in class, but just a good, strong product organization and product leadership. Specifically. What does that look like in an organization so that the rest of the work streams, the handoffs, the culture, etc. Can Can Can can fit together and can work nicely. What does good look like when it comes to product leadership? Beks, I'll turn to you first.
Beks 09:27
I'm really sorry, but I am going to say those famous product words, it depends. We love those, don't we? And I think that that is the rub, isn't it, that it absolutely does depend. But I think the things that are always there, like the the the ever present things that should be there are going to be somebody who understands that the product role is really tricky. You know, before we had our. Access to data as readily as we do today. Product people were encouraged and expected to use their gut instincts far more than then became habit once data started driving more decisions and you when I hire, I will always hire for diversity of thought, diversity of approach, diversity of experience. And so I'll often have a team that has some people who are, like, big and bold and brassy, and will stand up and go, I think we should do this. And there'd be other people going, well, hang on a minute, you know, like, have you done, have you spent the time doing the analytics on it? And that, for me is Nirvana, like having that, you know, not conflict, but that discussion, that debate, is absolutely key. So product leadership should be encouraging diversity of thought, hiring for diversity of thought, not hiring a bunch of product people who do it in the same way, who think in the same way. I think as well, depending on the complexity of the domain, you're going to want to have people in your product team who have a deep domain knowledge, who are, who are SMEs in the industry, or the technology that's used to deliver this solution, you know, to the customer. And if you don't have that in the team, then you're going to suffer. If you've got a bunch of people who love great UX and customer customer experience, but don't necessarily, necessarily understand the complexities of the of the tech stack that they're operating in, or the complexity of collectors of the industry that they're delivering into. So again, you know, good product leadership looks like, thinking about that, considering that, and setting the team up for success in the way that they're created. The other aspect of it is going, you know, upwards and outwards into the rest of the org. So for me, really quickly, because I've been talking a long time. For me, good product leadership is somebody who understands that you need to build those bridges and get good collaboration and partnerships across the rest of the organization, everybody who needs to which more often than not, is most people in the org should know what the current product is and what the future product will be, and you are responsible for making sure that's understood. You're also responsible for translating the vision of the C suite in the board into a strategy that is understood and recognizable to the entirety of the organization. And so what you should have in P and T at the end of all of that is a group of people that whenever they're picking up the pen and doing something, whether that's a product, person creating an artifact, or writing requirements, or a technologist who's actually, you know, cutting code, or analyzing data and providing insights that they know where the work they're doing today rolls up into in terms of outcomes, and if that disconnect is not there, you're doing something's not right, and that is really fundamentally down to good product leadership in defining and connecting all those dots that everybody knows what they're working On and
JJ 13:00
why. I completely agree with that. In terms of one of the most important things that that that illustrates good leadership is how, how does a leader connect all the dots to make it look simple? Nothing is simple, but to make it look simple across the organization, or at least the clarity to be simple. So Therese, what are your thoughts on
Therese 13:22
that? I agree, it depends. I mean, so I think you've got companies in different phases need different things. So if you're trying to go zero to one, there's, there's a some terminology I like. At the beginning you need pioneers who are going to zero to one, and figuring out, you know, how to, how to populate a new space. Settlers are sort of the the scaling PMS, where you're putting a little more structure around, you're figuring out how to scale. And then town planners are the ones where you've got, you know, more enterprise, you've got an established business, and you're you're looking more for efficiencies, and I think those, all these all require different skills and different mindsets and probably different product structures as well. So I'm kind of going to go back to what I I said at the beginning, which like, there's those top level outcomes that a product leader needs to drive. So that's driving product strategy and execution in line with company strategy, setting those teams up for success, so advocating for resources, access to customers, ensuring that those teams are gathering the right signals that they're empowered, and then working cross functionally to find those shared outcomes so that the teams can are working really well with engineering and design and ml and, you know, data analysis and all the all the parts that go into under. Really understanding how to make the right decisions for the business and the customer. Thank
JJ 15:04
you both for that perspective. It's really important to kind of set the stage on what good looks like, and I think we're all on the same page there. So I want to turn the conversation a little bit and talk about when times are tough within an overall economy or industry, but specifically within an organization, oftentimes Senior Product roles are not identified as the most important to to keep right when we're going through downsizing, when we're going through right sizing, when there's something happening within the organization that's not not wonderful, and we need to make some changes in an organization where product leadership is not understood as one of the valuable, you know, holes in the in the content. What do we do about that? How can we, first of all, I guess, and Therese, I'll ask you this question first, first of all, do you agree with that? Does that flow with some of the conversation we've had? And second, what are some of the things that you've seen or that we can do to make sure that product leadership is seen as valuable, even in the hardest at
Therese 16:12
times? Yeah, I've definitely seen that. And I've mostly seen a lot of de layering. So, you know, one or two product leaders left, but most of the middle management gone. And it's really, it's for those companies that aren't yet profitable. Those roles are expensive. And so when you're looking at how to, how to cut cost, those are, you know, you you got, I don't know, three entry level product managers for one very senior person. And so that's, you know, that on if you're just looking at it in terms of numbers, that's a that's an obvious decision. I think it's incredibly short sighted, because the whole role of product is to figure out what the most valuable thing to invest in for the company is and you need that person in the leadership per in the leadership position to to to see that and figure it out and drive the team in that direction. That is not something an entry product level manager can do. And so it's, yeah, it's very short sighted. To your question about, how do we how do we not have that happen? I So in my experience, it's a CFO who's making those decisions about who's driving the decisions about who is getting made redundant. And so I think getting close to that person and helping that person really understand the false economy. So it's so it's really the CFO who is driving those decisions. So I think the most important thing is to get close to the CFO explain the product, the role of product leadership, and how it is really a false economy to get rid of those people. Yeah.
JJ 18:04
Beks, what are your thoughts?
Beks 18:06
Yeah, I think that really rings true from, you know, sort of mid size to larger companies, where it totally makes sense to keep someone at a senior level to make sure that the money being spent in the masses is for the right reasons and at the right pace, in the right way, etc. And it's wonderful. You've got a story positivity there. You know, in your in your experiences, that you're talking about, that that's happened, and it's great to hear that that has happened. I would say I spent the last few years of my career in startup land, and that's absolutely not true. As soon as times are tough, as soon as cash flows an issue, all the ancillary leadership goes and in my experience, this sounds harsh, but I did a bit of investigation back tail end of last year around, like the tech layoffs and where they were happening. So a lot of people in product gates only product that has been paid off. It's like, No, it's not it's product, it's people, it's talent, it's data, and all of those ancillary leadership roles and middle management roles are just surplus to requirements where you're moving into a lean operating model, and I don't know whether I would argue that that's the wrong thing, either. Interestingly, like, because why would you have some top heavy people in the team if you've set your team up for success and they and they know how to deliver on the right things, and you've taught them in the right way, you should, they should be able to do an All right job. Obviously, it would be better if there was extra money and you could keep on those leadership roles. But if you are literally, like, at that point where it's going to be, well, it's either you or it's three of your team. And I've actually been asked that before. I had to hold my hands up and go, Well, you get, I genuinely think maybe keep three of my team. Because yes, you're not going to get the leadership, and you're not going to get someone thinking six months out, 12 months out, but you're going to get somebody who's going to be able to do an All right job. So I'm talking myself out of a job here, but I can sort of get it, and I find it difficult to argue against that honestly, and I think that's a shame.
Therese 20:23
I think the difference in our perspective is really around scale. So if it is either a product leader or three product three, PMS executing on the existing backlog for how, I guess, however long. Yeah, I can see your point. I think the thing, the thing though, is, you know, the market changes, and the you know, competitors do things, there are pricing pressures, there's, you know, new technology, and so a backlog and a roadmap, and actually a strategy and a vision it isn't static. And so if you are actually going to survive in the long term, in the long run, especially in this incredibly competitive economy, you need to have somebody with a BDI on all those external forces, who is able to bring those back into the into the product and direct the company in the right way, or your or your business is going to die.
Beks 21:25
I do agree with that. In an ideal world, you would, you would protect that, and you would want that. But I guess I'm I'm saying I'm seeing it from the decision makers point of view. And there's some possible ifs and buts in there, if, if the landscape changes, if the strategy needs to have a rethink, and because there's ifs and buts when they're making that decision today, and it's a number or a percentage, and they've just got to make the hard decisions, and those decisions are driven by cash flow. I can totally get it and stand by that decision. Might not be nice, might not be you know, it's often my job that might be up for the chop in that scenario, and all of ours, but I get it, and I don't think I can argue with it. And I think that's, that's my point.
Therese 22:08
I think the other Okay, so there's the making sure that the company is headed in the right direction based on, you know, external forces. I also think there's really hard prioritization that has to get done. And again, I would say that that is better done by a product leader. So you might have an existing roadmap and backlog that you're you know, that you could hand over to that team, but you know, chances are, engineering has been reduced as well, and so you then have to have a very BDI on what the right thing to prune is. So I think, yeah, I think, like, really hard prioritization. And then I would say the third thing I've seen is, is around motivation and retention. So you know, when people are made redundant in the company, the people left are, you know, there's a moat, there's an emotional challenge, there's people get demotivated. They worry about their own job, they get distracted. And so they need to feel valued and looked after, and that somebody is investing in their career and cares about them. And so, you know, if their leaders been chopped, that doesn't happen. And so you might have three product managers left who have a, you know, a list of things to do, but they may, you know, they may not be in an emotional or motivational state to actually do a good job, or they might leave,
JJ 23:38
yeah, it's actually a great point. What do you both say to the argument in this? In the scenario, let's say there's a scenario of it is a hard time. We all know that, you know, three doers, you know, make more financial sense than one leader, if you will, not that we don't do but you know what I'm saying? And the argument is, well, the CTO or the head of engineering can make some of those decisions, right? Or the CEO has a vision, right, depending on the scale of the company or size of the company, and we can make those decisions. We can prioritize, we can build the strategy for the product, and then we just need people to go do it. What are your thoughts on that? Because I see that quite often for certain size and types of companies that say we should need people to go execute on my vision. And I'm not the product person, I'm the engineer leader, but I have a vision for this or what have you. What do you what do you say about that? X, what do you think? Yeah, I
Beks 24:39
think you're thinking along the same lines as me there. I think JJ because I wish the world was where the way, the way that you're talking about there is honestly, I really wish it does, but I've seen exactly what JJ is outlining there in terms of, you know, even all the way down from, you know, you were talking around prioritization. You're talking about refocus, if the strategy changes, you're talking about. Motivation of the team. And there's a lot of people who just, especially if you do a good job, right, if you do a good job as a product leader, you make it look easy, like you mentioned that before. JJ, because quite often what we do is bleeding obvious. But it wasn't bleeding obvious before we did it, like no one was doing it. No one talked about it. The phraseology that we derive and the way that we talk about things, and the, you know, the direction that we send people on, more often than not, feels really obvious once you're doing it, once it's been pointed out, but after that, it's not so obvious. And I've, I have seen people think that they can just do just a good a job. And that would be the question like, why would I pay for you, if I could do it myself? Why would I pay for a CPO and a CTO, when the CTO can just do both, because I can't help with ISO compliance, but the CTO can, yeah, so
Therese 25:53
I have seen technology leaders who have really good product brains, and I've seen CEOs who have really good product brains. So really, again, it depends. But if that's not the case, and I've also seen it, you know, be be not the case, it actually ties very nicely back to your original point around ensuring that leadership in the business understands what really good product looks like, and this the skill set and the magic that it can bring.
JJ 26:31
So when you're in a scenario where we have done a good job as product leaders, we've, we've set things up. Things are running fairly smoothly, as Beck says, We, you know, if we do our job well, it's, it's almost as if it's, you know, we're not needed. Because what so much of our work is is behind the scenes. It's, it's getting those stakeholders on board. It's helping people understand. It's connecting those dots. It's not as apparent. Let's say we've done that, but we're in a situation where the CEO or some of our peers need some convincing, needs some you know, understanding, and maybe, maybe they're, they're aware enough of their own shortcomings that they know they're not a product mind, but they know what they don't Know, which is actually a really good quality, right? So, so what would you say that product leaders can do when we feel as if we've done a good job, but we're also struggling a bit with kind of proving that value what? What are some kind of tangible things that we can do? Therese,
Therese 27:38
so I had an experience recently where there was a very important big company initiative and engineering was not including product in the decision making. And what I did in that instance was sat down with my counterpart with a list of business and customer questions that should be driving those prioritization decisions. And said, you know, where, where does this come from if we're not involved? And it took, you know, a number of conversations and some nudging, but we were able to sort of turn the ship around and put product in their rightful place. That's
JJ 28:24
a great idea to to kind of turn it around and say, okay, you've made this prioritization. You know, where is that customer data? Or how have you found that that data to to prove that that hypothesis that you have, and if it's not there because it wasn't done then that that almost kind of proves the point. Okay, I love that. That's a great one BEKS, any, any experience on your part to kind of show the value or things that we can actually do to, you know, again, just kind of connect the dots for people of where the value is for product leadership
Beks 28:56
in those particular times of lean or tech focus, or just in general, maybe just
JJ 29:03
generally. Let's, let's just talk generally, not necessarily only in times of lean, but just generally speaking, how are, how are, how are you? How have you seen yourself or other good leaders kind of connect the dots for people and prove some tangible value? Yeah, I
Beks 29:19
think it's tricky, isn't it, so I'm probably going to talk really openly, because I think that's the best way. And hopefully, if there's anyone listening from this particular scenario, you'll understand where I'm coming from. If you've made it this far into the podcast, I landed in a recent role where I was presented the product strategy, and I looked at what I was being given, and with all the best will in the world, the only response I had was that's not a product strategy. That is a slide deck. And the reason why I said that and it's it was. Lippen, and it was purposely provocative by saying that, but it was saying to the team, you have created an ideal outcome. You have said what you want to do, and you've talked about the outcomes you want to achieve, but it's not a strategy, because you haven't identified how that is going to be possible. What is going to happen? What are the Lego bricks you need to build in the tech stack in order for that thing to be possible? What are the steps to validation that you're going to take in order for you to be able to stand with confidence in front of the exec or the board and say, categorically, this thing is going to give our customers or our prospects, exactly what they want, and they're going to buy it in this way for this reason. That's a product strategy. And so I think able being able to see that really quickly, because, you know, we can just see these things sometimes, because we've been around the block a few times, and it's just obvious to us being able to talk about it. And I pissed a few people off. Don't get me wrong. They weren't, they weren't ready to, like, accept that even as a statement, and I had to work through that. But I left things in that company, like, I don't work there anymore, in in a really good way, and I That's why I feel like I can talk about this openly, because it was a journey that we went on together, and we did all the things that were missing, and we created a product strategy, and we turned that ship around. And everybody in the organization, I think, who was involved would know that that had come from good product leadership, that I'd applied my discipline, the tools that I had at my disposal, the experiences that I'd had in the past, to be able to point to light on the things that were missing and to guide the team to get to the right outcome and to actually end up with a product strategy that worked, definition of what it was, an understanding of how We were going to move the tech stack around and the Lego bricks around in order to achieve that outcome, and a path to validate with customers. And we did validate the customers, and by the time I left, we'd had two contracts on that particular product. Big, tricky, B to B. So two is big,
JJ 32:16
yeah, yeah, that's amazing. Thank you both for that. Those those examples, because I think it's so important to to show others the inputs that we use to make decisions, right? Because, again, at the end of the day, and Therese, I loved something you said, I'm in paraphrasing, because I am old and don't remember exactly what you said, but that our job in product, or products purpose in a in a business is to, you know, decide, help, decide what bets to make, right, what, what things to put our investment in resources, dollars, etc. That's our job. And we do that through various, you know, ways of thinking, various inputs, various decision making techniques, etc, and showing others how we do that, how we get the information, how we certainly information, how we make decisions and use our judgment, I think, is a is a really clear, changeable way of doing that. And it's not that others aren't using the inputs and making decisions and part of the process, you know, but to really illustrate the value, I think those are both really great examples. So my final question for both of you is more around the what can product managers, even senior product managers, so individual contributors or even leaders, but not the top kind of leadership in a product organization. What can, what can those folks do if they're in a scenario where their direct peers aren't kind of connecting the dots, or even in selfs, don't really see, see kind of how the vision connects and how, you know, if we have a strategy, et cetera, if product managers, Senior Product Managers, et cetera, who are listening are in a scenario where they want a little bit more from their product leadership, how would you suggest or advise them to go talk to leadership and kind of some of the ways that they can address that? Because I think that's a real thing that happens again. We've talked about some of the some of the leaders out there aren't as as, you know, schooled as as we would like them to be. So So Beks, I'll start with you. What can a product individual contributor, product person, or kind of middle management product person, do if they want a little bit more from their product leader.
Beks 34:41
One of the things I often hear from people that I mentor or people I chat to at events and things like that, is the fundamental bit that tends to be missing, more often than not, is that the translation from the C suite or from the vision into. In tangible, understandable, actionable direction. And I think sometimes people who are victims of that not being done properly don't know or believe or feel empowered to challenge that they should be expecting that that it's their job to say to the product leadership, can you just sort that shit out? Like go and sit down with the CEO? Because you can and ask them those tricky questions, how exactly are we going to achieve that vision? What do you want us to do or off, more often than not, and I maybe it's just me that's been unlucky with this. But how many times I've been in an organization where they stand at the top and they go like you we know hands up that we're an inch deep and a mile wide, and you hear it all the time, and people laugh about it like you know? Oh well, never mind. Make a freaking decision. And as a product leader, we should be able to go and facilitate and enable and challenge the rest of the leadership to make a freaking decision. And I think if you are suffering from a leadership that is not making decisions either at all or in a timely fashion, or it's really unclear how they expect you to deliver on to the you know, to their vision, and the strategy is wishy washy at best, that you should be putting that on your product leadership. That's their job. And keep on at it. Don't just ask them once and think they'll get on with it. Ask them a week later. So how'd it go? How did your chat go? Tell us all about it.
JJ 36:40
I love it. Absolutely. Three. What do you think?
Therese 36:44
Um, so I agree with BEKS. I've seen exactly that gap, not not just one time. But I think the challenge is, is the power dynamic? I mean, obviously the leadership has more experience, more positional power and is supposed to be the expert. And I think that it's very hard as a junior. Pm to one. I mean, if you've not worked in a place where you know what good looks like to even recognize the problem, but if you have to, then you know, tell your boss, essentially, I think you're doing a crap job. Like, pull it together. Like, that's a really hard thing to do. I think what I would recommend in that situation is finding podcasts or blogs or something that you know, have suggestions on how to do, how to solve the problem that you're pointing at, and just go, Hey, I was listening to this podcast, and it had some really good ideas about this, like, how about we try this? So because I think, yeah, I think it's probably too much to ask to have product managers hold their leaders accountable?
JJ 38:03
Yeah, I think I would love to see every environment be one where there is such psychological safety and a culture to question each other and hold everyone accountable, up, down and to the side. It's not always the case, and especially the more junior you are, the more difficult it is, right? Because for two things, one, as you said, we don't always know exactly what we should be receiving from our leaderships or seeing from our leaders. And two, it's just intimidating, right? But I do believe, and I try to, I try to teach this and speak this to the students I teach, who are more than Junior they're literally not even in product yet, all the way up to, you know, the corporate teams I work with and and allowing yourself and wherever you are in your career to be to be open to feedback, to be open to suggestions, and so I love both of your points. Of you know, if we're not getting what we think we need, maybe do some validation that we should be getting that, and then go and ask about it in a diplomatic way. And then second, you know, as leaders, I think all three of us would attest to this, that we don't know everything, and sometimes the best advice or the best light bulb moment comes from someone who works for us, asking us something or telling us something or suggesting something. So you know, we're very often open to an experiment of a new process or a new something. So having a blog or some sort of resource that says, hey, you know, so and so company used this. Why don't we try it for, you know, the next sprint or two, or whatever, right? I think, I think most leaders would actually really embrace that. So again, thank you both for that. We obviously have a lot of product leaders who listen to the podcast, but we have a lot of folks who. Who are kind of in the middle of of, you know, product manager roles, even trying to get into product manager roles. And so I always like to to approach whatever topic on kind of both of those perspectives. So again, thank you for that, and thank you for the conversation. I have loved this. Beks, you. You reached out not too long ago and said, Hey, what do we what do we have this conversation on productvoices? And I was absolutely thrilled to make it happen. So So three BEKS, thank you so very much for sharing your time with us, sharing your insights, giving us some words of wisdom and some tips on how we can be better leaders and how we can expect more from our leaders. So I appreciate you. Thank you very much for being here. Thanks
Therese 40:43
so much. It's been great, good debate. I
Beks 40:45
loved it. And
JJ 40:46
thank you all for joining us on productvoices. Hope to see on the next episode.
Intro 40:50
Thank you for listening to productvoices, hosted by JJ Rorie, to find more information on our guests, resources discussed during the episode, or to submit a question for our Q and A episodes. Visit the show's website, productvoices.com and be sure to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform. You.