The One Mistake Everyone Make When Managing A Product

Q: What's something most people aren't prepared for in product management?

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Do you know who the top 2 Test bowlers with the most number of wickets are?

The off-spin maestro, Muttiah Muralitharan & the leg-spin wizard, Shane Warne.

With 1500 wickets between them, they were undisputedly the best in the business.

Interestingly, they also hold some other records.

Muralitharan conceded the most number of runs in Test cricket.

Shane Warne's been clobbered for the most number of sixes in Tests.

Note that these are not private mistakes. These are publicly witnessed guffaws where the ball sailed over the fence time & time again.

However, those facts don't discredit their stature in cricket.

So, something people aren't prepared for is that a PM will be publicly wrong many times on the way to greatness.

And what you'll have to do is suck it up, learn & think about your next delivery.

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This advice isn't just for the employee. It's for the employer as well.

The cricketing captains of Shane & Murali never shied away from handing them the ball despite knowing they might concede a few.

Ex: I was once designing a gamification system for an internal product.

The goal was to create a brand reputation leader board. Users would rate what they thought about a particular company via a 5-star rating control.

When I ran the prototype in front of the stakeholders, I was on a roll. The UX was amazing & the audience was cheering.

Then, someone asked about how the company ranking would be evaluated.

I told them, "Oh, we just add up the star ratings. Keep it simple, you know?"

Silence.

Then the main stakeholder got up from his seat & said "So, you're saying if 50,000 people gave a 1-star rating to a company, they'd be ranked higher than a company with just 100 5-stars?"

More Silence.

The manager left the room. I stood there with nothing to say. I felt stupid.

I wasn't just hit for a six. The ball had left the stadium.

However, I had no choice but to try again. And full credit to my employer at the time that trusted me to bounce back & wanted me to win.

Things will get messy.

You're bound to interpret the data wrong.

A feature that you spent 4 sprints on might bomb hard.

Metrics might fall off the grid.

You'll have a choice to say "I don't know" or fudge up a half-true story in real time. The latter case never ends well.

It is mentally taxing.

However, while it may seem thankless, it's through these trenches that you'll find those moments to truly celebrate.

That product update that makes customers excited.

The consistent effort on growth to earn that next round of funding.

That 10x feature that changes the game around.

And that one customer comment that makes all of this worthwhile:

"I don't know what I'd do without this product."