Key Responsibilities of a Leader (and Whatnot)

Welcome back product people to the Product Bakery. I'm Christian and as always here with my co-host Alex. Hi Alex. Hey Christian. Alex, it's good to see you. And I have to say I'm a little bit exhausted today. That's not good news. Well it depends. Maybe you can help me cheering up. I'm sure I can give it a try. Did you try drinking? Not yet. I think I should do that while you're answering, while you're speaking, making myself a drink. I miss the times where we still had like wine episodes. Yeah, we need to. With guests. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know one guest who... Okay my mood is getting better. Here's the thing. I am faced with a challenge or a feeling that I'm having. As you know, I'm back to coaching, focusing more on leaders and I was observing something while I was having some coaching sessions with product leads. And you know, I can't name people or companies, NDAs are very bad sometimes. We're not speaking for anyone else than ourselves. That's a disclaimer. And by the way, if you like this episode, press the follow button please. Here's the thing Alex. So I think we've talked about it a couple of episodes ago that it is very important for a leader to not only take care of themselves, but also to have clarity about their roles. And to me, that includes also knowing what you can expect from your employees. And I have the feeling from my observation, and also, I mean, there's one product person who's working with a design person. And even there, I was like hearing out that not everyone really knows what to expect from an employee, which is just super, super important though. And I wanted to share that with you and hear your thoughts about it, first of all. I mean, something I say a lot, and I think it fits in here as well. I mean, as a manager or as a leader or whoever want to put it, you're only as good as your team is, right? I mean, you need to rely on a team. You hire the people that you want to trust so that you as a group can reach certain objectives. And a lot of it is actually in the team's responsibility, right? Otherwise, you don't need a team. I mean, if you can do the things on your own, then probably you don't need a team. But I don't know many people who can do a team's amount of work on their own, right? So I think, yeah, it's but that's like really the essence of the work, right? I love it. I think we need more people like you. No, in a positive sense. The reason why we're talking today is to raise the awareness about that. Because, as you said, you are as good as your team is. And the best way for your team to get good at what they're doing is also knowing what they have to do and what they don't have to do, right? So and there's one example about one company that started developing or defining a product strategy. And, you know, product strategy is like a big thing. It requires time to define a good one, but it should not take too long because, you know, the markets are running too. So how can you manage that, right? And like, I have seen product people who are product leads who are trying to do it by themselves. Some of them are just outsourcing it to their employees, which can work if you have a mature team, by the way. But in most cases, there is like not enough clarity, not enough structure in approaching defining a product strategy. So and the reason why is because people don't know how to do it. Yeah. And the problem is then that your employees, I mean, you say, hey, I need, let's say you are a company with multiple teams that are focusing on different areas, products, features, etc. So you go to one product person to senior product manager and say, hey, I need a market overview. And you go to the next one. Hey, what are the costs, right? And it makes all sense. But if you just letting them send you the information and not telling them what to do and why you're doing things and just, you know, like working behind the curtains and trying to make a strategy out of it and then go to the CEO without involving the team. Yeah. I mean, of course, you need to first of all, create a level of transparency, give context, context is the most important thing, right? If you just like ask for a deliverable, as you say, it can be market analysis or competitive analysis or something. And you don't share why you need it, you will probably not get the best out of it, right? Because I do generally also believe that the expertise of the team and the specific knowledge that they individually have across the different teams, if you give enough context on why you're requesting something, you will not just get this single deliverable, but you will actually get way more out of it. At the same time, I do want to share one other thing, which is the overall challenge of having a very thinly stretched team, right? Because especially when working on one of these like larger topics, strategic topics, and so on, and you rely on collaboration with different team members, different teams, and different stakeholders. And they work in autonomous cross-functional teams. That means that probably 120% of their time is already like full with day to day operations, business and tasks. So for them prioritizing also some of these outside tasks could be challenging, right? And I mean, to say that this is a problem that I bumped into quite often is also, yeah, that's why I want to share it also. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's not easy to find, you know, the capacity, but let's say like that. I think, you know, my quote, right? A bad plan is better than no plan. I mean, talking about product strategy right now. Yeah. So, and, you know, giving context is just super important, but the second level of it is you start giving context to people, but the next thing you should do is keeping them in the loop, involving them into the process, right? I mean, there's a very good example like with a child. So if you are in the kitchen and your child is looking at you, your child will always ask you to help. Can I do something? What are you doing, right? So if you're telling your child all the time, you don't need to do anything, it does not feel involved and it won't feel happy, right? It won't feel loved as crazy as it sounds, right? But, you know, and even though you let your child, I don't know, cut something easy or clean something up, it's about giving the child the feeling that you are there, that it's involved into the process. And as crazy as it sounds, the same counts for us grown-up people in companies, in organizations, we want to be involved. And just explaining someone why he or she has to deliver something is a good start, but it's not the end. It continues with communicating transparently across this development process of that strategy. And that's something I see usually the rope cutting, when people make the first step by giving a good advice to people and telling them what to do, but then, you know, not continue the communication. Yeah. And I also feel like that's, I mean, to some extent applies not only to your direct team, but also stakeholders of keeping them in the process, involving them and so on, helping, like by keeping them in the loop, it also helps you a lot in getting buy-in, getting their commitment, getting their help in trickier situations. And I mean, I think communication, and maybe this whole conversation is about communication, but that's just like one of the key things, right? Yeah. I think honestly, you nailed it, right? I mean, there's not only the communication to your team involved, it involves stakeholders, the top management, other leaders. I mean, usually like a product strategy does not only involve product and engineering, right? You have to go across departments, marketing, et cetera. So yeah, I mean, as you said, you need to keep up the communication and it might be sometimes exhausting. I know it from my personal experience, but it's worth it, right? Because as you said, you get the buy-in from people easier. People feel also very grateful when they are involved into the process, which also increases the chance of doing something good and something right. Well, let's be honest, especially when we talk about strategy and so on, that's like the number one topic everyone wants to contribute to. I think a lot of the companies make the mistake to do this behind the curtains. So at the end, it comes across as a top-down decision where nobody contributed. And then you have like a revolution in the team where they know it better and they don't agree with the top-down God's decision, right? And yeah, it's down to... I mean, how often have we sit in a meeting and got confronted with that top-down, that's our next big move shit. And employees sitting there and they're like, what the fuck is this, right? Because usually they know what should be built. Yeah. And that's the thing. Often I thought, okay, no, but I know it better. In fact, spending time on some of these decisions, I do know that there have been cases where I thought I know it better, but I didn't. I just didn't have the right context. As a leader or as an IC? As an IC. Okay. Got it. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Right. And that's why I can relate sometimes if I get this from the team itself, when there is like disconnect where, okay, it's first of all on me or even the people above me, right? Of like, okay, maybe we didn't communicate exactly why we are focusing on this one thing. Of course, there's the part of like, could we have taken all the inputs from the people that are at the front row that know things best and through their own experience? Could we have taken their input in to come up with an even better strategy? But yeah, also communicating why the strategy is the way it is, is sometimes an issue. Yeah. And I think, I mean, if you are faced with a challenge like a strategy, I mean, you can take everything actually as a leader. I think the most important thing is to make yourself a plan. What do you want to achieve? Whom do you need into that process? And how do you want to communicate it to the outside? No matter who it is, whether it's your team, whether it's stakeholders, I mean, you know, starting with such basics is, with that, you're setting a good foundation for that project, in my opinion. And yeah, I mean, it was on my heart and I wanted to share it. And now I think I can sleep very well. You also ended it with a nice conclusion. Curious to hear if anyone else is struggling with this or if anyone else has better solutions to this. And I'm happy to pick it up if you love it. If you want to hear more, make sure to follow us and press the button. Yes. With that, Christian, it was lovely to see you today. I hope you're happier now than at the beginning of the conversation. I am. Sleep tight, Alex. You too, Christian.