Why I avoid to focus on content to get to better outcomes
TL;DR (AI-powered): Great product management leadership isn’t about diving into content details—it’s about empowering PMs, optimizing systems for outcomes, and navigating uncertainty to drive long-term value.
I am currently focused on product management, and one subject that every now and then arises is how little I tend to speak with the product managers (PMs) I lead about content. It’s not that I don’t care, I care about it – a lot. It’s a very deliberate choice made on couple of fundamental principles:
I won’t ever, nor intent, to become a specialist in matters I expect the PMs in my team already have it covered;
How I can best contribute to their growth, and the organization as a whole, is rather likely to be in an indirect manner (or to use the technical term, in a oblique fashion).
One of my favorite quotes captured that much better:
“We’ll prioritize outcome over process, while recognizing that some processes get you better outcomes”. - Matt Wallaert
That is as real as it gets, in my personal opinion. Contrasting that to the opposing idea might be useful: I hope anyone who aims at becoming their best version at leading something (like PMs are expected to…) can see that clearly, and the least productive thing I could do would be to focus on direct content matters.
Don’t get me wrong – I love talking content! I love getting a deeper insight on why we should care about certain things, all of that is fine. But I don’t believe I add the most value by offering yet another opinion on the direct matters.
I strongly believe that by focusing on those “better ways to get to better outcomes” (a way to summarize the insightful quote by Matt Wallaert) I add most value. That’s at least my hypothesis, or my bias even if you like. Interesting enough – that’s me applying proper product management to what is my mandate and role about: to lead product managers.
At least that’s how I look at it – and as a good product person, I keep my eyes and ears open to lear otherwise. So far, though, it has been largely validated.
You may be asking yourself now – fine, that kind of makes sense. But can you be more specific, like a sort of short summary version of what some those things that help in “oblique manner” could look like? Sure! Hold my beer (and if you happen to be observing as I write this, it wouldn’t be that far off, really…).
We deal with what we know and what we don’t know. Too often in knowledge work (what product development is all about) what we don’t know is quite fundamental. Including that we can’t be sure whether what we expect as value will materialize. In other words, the world is probabilistic – we can only accept and deal with it.
Accepting and deal with it largely boils down to controlling what we can control and make sure we learn faster. We can control what we can build and through that can largely influence when it can be ready. And hopefully that “when” is shorter – because that helps to learn and deal with the underlying uncertainties. It’s arguably also a way to maximize value on the long run (as it can be demonstrated by fairly simple and sensible simulations).
Operating as stated above also depends on treating your delivery system as – surprise, surprise – as a “system”. Meaning that we look at things holistically and we figure out ways that enable us to excel at change – because if we are truly accept the premises above, we have to accept that too often we may be wrong, and pivoting out of it has to be a tangible option.
And I could go on and on… But I hope you get the spirit of it. I surely also hope that sounds much less like a “rant” as it does in my mind, as I go through it. Just in case it does…
/ rant.
And I surely do hope it’s useful – one way or another.
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The blog / newsletter will enter in a little “sabbatical” (due to a couple of personal reasons, including some early summer holidays)... I will see if I can manage a couple of revisited topics here and there, but for the next about a month, I will surely not keep the regular weekly cadence.
By Rodrigo Sperb, feel free to connect, I'm happy to engage and interact. I’m passionate about leading to achieve better outcomes with better ways of working. How can I help you?