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A thread on 2 contrasting attitudes while working at startups.
Of all the product managers I have met or worked with, I have observed these contrasting attitudes / personalities. Below are some of my observations. For sake of naming, I will call them Definite & Perpendicular :)
Of all the product managers I have met or worked with, I have observed these contrasting attitudes / personalities. Below are some of my observations. For sake of naming, I will call them Definite & Perpendicular :)
Attitude A (Definite): The Complaining Attitude.
(Don’t already assume all the negative connotations already, because complaints can be fair too)
(Don’t already assume all the negative connotations already, because complaints can be fair too)
PM is a fuzzy role at times. Different companies handle product managers differently, different people perceive product managers differently. Product managers see the role differently as their career progresses. Such fuzziness begets conflicts, some perceived and some actuals.
Most orgs want PMs to be pure objective in their advocacy for users and for best utilisation of the company’s money and engineers’ time. That leads to PMs disagreeing to various inputs & suggestions and mostly saying NO, which may leave various people in the organisation bitter
At times this can be seen as incompetence of the product folks to deliver on their promises.
It’s human to complain and in such situations some PMs can start reverse training their minds to believe that everyone is either non-cooperative..
It’s human to complain and in such situations some PMs can start reverse training their minds to believe that everyone is either non-cooperative..
.. or just not objective enough to understand. That’s a slippery slope. Once you start training your mind to complain, their is no end! You will end up finding a valid reason to complain about almost everything!
You can end up complaining about the intent or speed of engineers or about lack of push from marketing to get distribution sorted or the leadership to gather more investments or even the users to be stuck in a previous generation! There is actually no logical end to this.
This mindset inhibits growth of the individual and such product managers generally end up dependent on rest of the team for getting things done. However, they will always have reasons on why some problems are not solved.
Point to remember is, that if the product does not do well the reasons mean nothing in a medium to long term. Short term work justifications hold no significance in medium and long term.
Attitude B (Perpendicular): The Solver attitude.
These are people who are in it for fun. PM is about being as aware of the surroundings and users as possible (research, data, market study blah blah another thread sometime) but still needing to make moves with uncertainty.
These are people who are in it for fun. PM is about being as aware of the surroundings and users as possible (research, data, market study blah blah another thread sometime) but still needing to make moves with uncertainty.
Some things will work, most things might not work but movement is important. Some people will love doing this with you, while most people will be regularly galled. They will try to take everyone together as much as possible and required, but not more.
The good thing about this attitude is that these folks aren’t optimising for reaching imaginary short term organisational goals of promotions et al but are craving to solve a good problem. Please don’t mistake them for hermits..
.. they are glory seekers who want to make a dent in the world. Also, they have complaints too, just that they don’t stick for too long because it doesn’t help them move forward in the game.
If you are certain type should you change? That’s something each person should decide for herself. But IMHO Perpendicular lives a slightly happier, more exciting and more impactful life than definite.
Specially, if you are young and getting into the creation world of startups, it would be good to ask yourself whether you have a complaining attitude or the solver attitude.
Countries like India and Indonesia have enough scope for complains and for problems. Lastly, product managers are just one example. If you are part of a resource constraint work environment this should be relevant to any role that needs everyday decision making.
And a poll, which one do you think you are?
