Wartime PMs, Peacetime PMs

-
Ben Horowitz's blog is a cornucopia of insight and pure wisdom. 

 One post I've really liked is Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO. It got me thinking about Product Managers in general, and how there is such a thing as a Peacetime PM and Wartime PM. 

 Here are a couple of excerpts from Ben's post:
Peacetime CEO spends time defining the culture. Wartime CEO lets the war define the culture. 
Peacetime CEO always has a contingency plan. Wartime CEO knows that sometimes you gotta roll a hard six.
Peacetime CEO knows what to do with a big advantage. Wartime CEO is paranoid.

Peacetime CEO thinks of the competition as other ships in a big ocean that may never engage. Wartime CEO thinks the competition is sneaking into her house and trying to kidnap her children. 
Peacetime CEO aims to expand the market. Wartime CEO aims to win the market. 
Peacetime CEO strives for broad based buy in. Wartime CEO neither indulges consensus-building nor tolerates disagreements. 
Peacetime CEO sets big, hairy audacious goals. Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.

 Ben goes on to make the point that people (or companies) are by nature either peacetime people/organizations or wartime people/organizations, however the needs of their product or company may vary with time and it needs people to either adjust (or get new people). 

 I think the same applies to every team, every product and by extension to every Product Manager. Product Managers are human (...mostly anyway) and each are better suited to either wartime or peacetime. Similarly, every product at different points will be served better by either approach.

 Most people that knew me from a few years ago would tell you that I default to "Peacetime PMing" - I like to spend as much time as necessary thinking through the problem, I'd advocate trusting engineering to come up with the right architecture, shipping when I thought were were "ready", ignoring competition or alternatives, putting quality before dates, innovation and true value before perception and encourage a culture of product where we solicit inputs from everyone and filter to the right answer.

 However, the products I've worked on at Google over the last four years yanked me hard in the "Wartime PMing" direction - these were products that were, in some form or the other, under siege - large competitor(s), internal pressure, too many voices/ideas that needed to be rationalized, a strong need for advocating for resources internally or externally, teams that needed wins and needed them fast, products that needed a quick turnaround before we could ramp up. I ended up developing a set of skills and a style of PMing that didn't exactly take over my "Peacetime" tendencies, but modified them significantly, overall for the better. It forced me to develop skills, and indeed changed by personality a bit - things that I think are critical for my job - more products need good Wartime PMs than solid Peacetime PMs. :-)

 Good PMs recognize both their defaults (most people don't), and the needs of their product and are able to switch from being peacetime generals to wartime generals easily. 

 Good PMs recognize that a product's needs may be different from what comes to you naturally and being able to adapt your style accordingly is key.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The "Rescue Me" minisodes

-
I'm a fan of the FX show " Rescue Me " I was lukewarm when Dennis Leary mentioned the mini-sodes on his Daily Show visit. But, for the Rescue Me's particular situation it works really well. First the mini-sodes are actually good! they use characters from the story and tell a little anecdote they were clearly pretty cheap to produce through what seems like a little bit of complicated mess, they're distributing like crazy: YouTube , Crackle (Sony's site), the FX site (powered by Brightcove), Hulu These do exactly what they're supposed to do new episodes aren't coming till Spring 2009 , the fans need something to tide them over and keep the show in their memory: done potentially rope in new fans (short episodes, lower commitment to start watching the show) without freaking out old school media which is loathe to risk potential DVD sales by putting older episodes/clips online: done Its not completely clear to me how much this is by their own design, and
Read more

A short love letter to ~8 years on Google Search - 8 things I’m grateful for.

-
  After a few weeks off, I started a new gig within Google yesterday and it hit me that for the first time in almost eight years I won’t be working on some part of Google Search. Eight years ago, I told the team when I was interviewing that I was “looking for a place to call home for a while and grow there”. My experiences here more than met that need.  I used to write a regular “10 things about…” listy column for a while at a college newspaper. So in that style here’s 8 things (one for each year) I feel grateful to have experienced/learned in this time. Also, like that column which I banged out the night before it was due, this post is something that I don’t need to do, yet I feel somehow compelled to do (and so it’ll likely be longer and less crisp than it should be :-))    It actually is awesome to work on something so many people use and love, and that positively touches people’s lives. There’s a talk I give externally about Search and a line I often end up using is how the mission
Read more

Avengers Endgame: how trivial passions can nudge a career

-
Image
The Internets reminded me that today was exactly 2 years since Avenger's Endgame was released. I remember that day vividly for a few reasons I woke up before sunrise (way before the alarm went off).   I wore this (now that I think about it) borderline appropriate T-shir t and then..  .. showed up before 7:00am to watch that movie at Century Shoreline before going to work.  This is still the only movie that has a scene that can make me tear up consistently every single time (I know, I know - it's ridiculous).  That day was interesting from a work perspective for another reason. Along with a few other people at work (and with some crazy last-minute negotiating), we'd pulled together the Thanos Easter Egg on Search. It was typical of a lot of Easter Eggs on Search at the time, in that it wasn't really anybody's job, but we pushed it through because we loved the idea enough to do it. My day job on Media experience on Search helped me justify it a little bit I guess.
Read more