Why Product Manager Shouldn't Exist

Hey Alex, today I'd like to talk to you about the role of product managers. And why they shouldn't exist. I mean, that coming from a former product manager is an interesting opener. Well, I mean, spoiler alert, you might will feel triggered or and or offended if you listen to this podcast episode today. Like just to frame this question, you know, we are addressing mostly product managers in this podcast, right? Yeah, it might be our last episode, I know. Okay. So, so you're digging our grave? Kind of. Would you lie to me? Are you not enjoying meeting me on a weekly basis and talking to me? Okay, so let's do it like a content based. Are you up for this conversation, Alex? So let's make this choice together. I mean, you're the one digging, so dig ahead. No, so I had a, I had a, there's a fun backstory. So I mean, as you know, or for those who tuning in for the first time or not regularly, I started building my own products with make.com and other tools. And I just realized, yeah, first of all, how much I have to learn when it comes to building products. Even though I thought I knew a lot, I actually don't. And at the same time, I am also experiencing a lot of freedom when it comes to doing stuff that I wasn't able to do in the past because I wasn't an engineer or designer, or I didn't have people who could build what I wanted to have. And now I can do these things all by myself. So with that said, I was just recently, yeah, started, I was recently building stuff again, and I was just faced with design problems. That's why I'm, for those who listen, I'm regularly approaching Alex because I have design questions. So Alex is more or less becoming my design VP who gives me feedback and design critics. And at the same time, I'm also talking to other people who are engineers to help me getting my technical tasks done. So, and then I just started realizing, okay, I don't know why it happened, but I was just talking to someone about Agile and Scrum Master, and Alex, you know, my opinion about Scrum Master in general is very limited. But then I just realized, so the problem with Scrum Master and Agile coaches and stuff like that is the job itself doesn't make sense, right? I mean, if my job is to optimize something that people should do anyway, so what's my job then? Yeah, I mean, it becomes a job when people don't do it anyway. Yeah, exactly. But that's a symptom that you solve, not the problem, right? So this is always my point of view when it comes to this whole Agile topic. And the question is also, what is this person actively doing and how is this person actively contributing to product development? They contribute to the processes mainly, right? Exactly. To the process. But here's the thing, right? I mean, what is the definition of a process and what do you call process? And then we're coming back. I mean, if these are things that you should do anyway, and you don't do them, you have bigger and different problems than the process itself. So and I mean, when I'm speaking on conferences or having discussions and debates with people, I'm always going to this direction when I want to share my opinion on Scrum and Agile and stuff like that. But the problem that I just realized is when I'm talking to product people, because I was attending a CPO dinner, and the question comes up, the difference between product managers, POs, what's the job of a product manager and stuff like this, and I just realized, okay, it's hard to define the job of a product manager. I think, please correct me if you see that different, but I think we can agree on that, right? So I mean, I still feel like the industry overall always struggled to really have a proper definition for the PM versus PO versus whatsoever. Especially, not because there isn't a definition for it, there is, but simply because it also changes across all the different companies. Every company uses them differently. Every company gives those people different responsibilities, different authorities or ownership over decisions and decision making and so on. So I think it probably already starts with the definition of these roles that same for design, right? Like UX designers, UI designers, product designers, visual designers, UX, UI designers, and it all goes on. There are differences. There is definitions. I for myself have my own definition and my own reasoning why I am hiring product designers and not UX or UI designers or UX designers or UI designers or service designers. But still, I think it varies and depends across the different companies and across who you're talking to and the people that you have at hand. And it's never just like one single thing that's true for everyone. That's exactly the problem that I started to face when I was having these conversations with the other CPOs and other product managers about the role of product manager. Because if I ask what is a designer doing, then we can agree on a designer designs and engineer codes. What does a product manager do? He manages the product, but here's the thing. This is a very vague answer. And that's exactly the problem that you just mentioned, because that's when the definition started to get broad and people coming up with different opinions, but there's something that... No, I mean, I guess the point is like what each company needs to look at. And I always love when these conversations come up of like, ooh, what is a PM? What is a PO? Should I hire a PM? Should I hire a PO or whatsoever? Maybe you should not. Maybe you should sit down first and understand what you need for your business. And then you can see whatever person and maybe there is a title that you hire for because it attracts people that can do specific things. But then within this word of POs and PMs, you might need to hire that one PO that completely fits your description of a product manager and helps you to get the job done. But it's not about the definition of the role, it's about your company and what you need to achieve. And maybe that's not a PM. I agree. And now we're coming actually to the point that I wanted to drop. So what I know is what a product manager is not doing. So a product manager is not designing, a product manager is not coding, and a product manager is also not managing the people. Which by definition brings you in a very tough position, right? Where at least I was struggling a lot with in my career. And I also know that other product managers are regularly struggling with this in-between position with not enough power sometimes to drive decision and make real decisions about the product. I mean, yeah, we can say the product manager is the CEO of the product, the product manager drives the business. But honestly, a product manager doesn't drive the business. Business decisions are made by the C-level. Let's be clear about that. Have you ever seen, I mean, of course, there are great product managers out there who have enough power to do that. So that's true. That's also what you said. If you sit down as a company and think first on what you need, then you will come to the conclusion and that's what I have observed. And also that was a feedback from an engineer that I was meeting after this CPO dinner that I had. I asked him, hey, I told him the story that I don't know what a product manager really does and I don't think that a product manager is really managing the product in my opinion because you have many obstacles that you're facing. And then the engineer I used to work with told me, yeah, Christian, you were never doing product management when we worked together. And I was like, I was shocked for a moment. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, you were doing leadership. You were keeping the stakeholders informed. You were keeping the C-level away from us. You were helping us to do our work and make our own decisions. And that brought me then back to the conversation we had about Airbnb, right? So the Airbnb CEO said, we don't need product managers. We can give these responsibilities to, for example, the designers, the engineers, or the product marketing managers. So these are the people who are building and selling the product at the end of the day. So at the end, what you're saying is the need of having someone to facilitate it, right? I mean, call it leadership, call it facilitation or so on, but it's about managing. And this is where PM or product management comes in. It's about managing the relationships or the different people involved, right? Like working with the designer, making sure they do what they need to do, working with the engineer, writing down their tickets and so on and so forth. But I mean, there is organizations or sometimes it is possible that you don't need an extra person to just do this, especially the small ones, right? I mean, think of early startups. Yes, you might have like a product person founding the company, but oftentimes it's the engineers or there's an engineer and a business person, right? And they manage to do these things because simply there isn't the time and then they organize themselves. So I do believe that there is a place in where teams can self-organize themselves and can be very efficient without having a product manager to make them efficient, right? And where the designer can help decide based on the insights and so on what they should build next and where they can then align with the business. But then at the same time, I also know and I also have seen the situations where it was helpful to have this person, right? Same as the engineer that you mentioned, you talked to, when they said that you kept their back free and you made sure that they had time to focus on it, I mean, maybe there is a place where it's important to have someone who can take this role and who can facilitate for them because otherwise the people who should be building or should be designing or should be analyzing the product are the ones then spending the time on communication. And actually you already started with my next point because you're right, I don't believe you need someone who does that. And there are two ways to look at it. I mean, on one hand, you're absolutely right. Smaller companies can handle this because they are much more flexible and I say it now in quotes, agile when it comes towards decision-making and execution. But for bigger companies where you already have a lot of established processes, hierarchies, bureaucracy, of course, a person who comes in to facilitate, manages, supports, empowers is definitely helpful. But I believe still instead of hiring a person who does that, you should rather go one level up and make sure that the leadership team takes over because that's why you have a leadership team. If teams can't work without disruption or if teams are struggling with making good business decisions that are taken over by a product manager, then you should rather think about what you as a leadership team can do to make sure that all teams are aligned and know what to focus on. That's fixing on the problem rather than introducing a symptom fixer, right? Yeah. And I know you're feeling now a challenge because you are a leader. And yes, I feel guilty for, or I'm definitely guilty for like using also the PMs in order to just like make sure to help me in terms of like making sure things run smoothly, right? But I mean, the thing is also that as an organization grows, communication becomes harder. It's not as straightforward. There is multiple people involved, right? So even decisions, then when you have to take them, who is presenting them to the leadership? Should the engineer, the designer and so on, like, do you rather have like five people then going and sit down with leadership to present it and to discuss it? Or do you have one person to facilitate that, right? Or to manage that interaction? So I mean, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. I'm a big fan of optimization of processes. Absolutely. I need to drop one more option that most people don't think about. What about a leader goes into the team, gets himself an update and goes back? How about that? But it's still the leader interacting with five different people. Or you go to a team meeting. And it still might disrupt. Or you go to a team meeting. Or you go to a team meeting. Absolutely. But it's one person less. Yes. I mean, the thing is, like, I'm now… It's a thought-provoking idea, but I just want to drop it because we never talk about that. About the leader going into the meetings? About the leader getting the information that he or she needs. Why always pulling people out? So do it yourself. I mean, because they have PMs. No, but the thing is, there's PMs doing this, there's project managers doing this. When I think of facilitation and process optimization and making sure to keep people's backs free, I'm also thinking a lot of, like, think design ops, think research ops. I'm not sure if product ops is the same. Maybe. But my feeling is they are usually more focused on bugs and escalations and reportings and these sort of things. But also, the role of a design ops person is really helpful in a company, and they only make sure to follow up on processes, to check in, to talk with stakeholders, so that the designers need to attend less meetings and that they can spend more time focusing on what they want to do. Now, of course, you can turn it around and you can look at it from different angles and you can say, okay, that's the role of leadership to do this. The truth is somewhere in between. And let's talk about in between. I mean, you're saying, remove the PMs from the equation. I mean, I don't feel like I can make that statement. I can understand that you don't want to make or cannot make that statement. And I'm 100% sure that it's not that easy to make that equation that I'm dropping here. But the point is that I'm more and more realizing is what is the real value that a product manager delivers? And I'm not talking about a theoretical concept, Alex. I'm talking about the practice. We all have worked in many companies. Which person do you know who really made the difference in product management? I do believe that there is product managers out there and product managers that I worked with that had a lot of impact. I'm interested in what you have seen. I have seen some PMs having a lot of impact. I need to add a but, which is then often also related to the people in the teams that could have the impact or that should have the impact not taking the impact. And I'm saying I believe and I've seen like there is a lot of organization where product managers take important decisions on the products. I believe that PMs shouldn't be the ones making them. There is companies where PMs draw wireframes and hand them over and tell the designers to make them pretty and no designer challenges it. There is product managers that are being told by the management, you need to build this and then they execute it with the team. So the PM and the PMs that I know, there is a lot of PMs that have a lot of impact in the company in terms of like driving things through. But is that then the right thing? That's another question. And I think that's maybe more the question of where we'd like to talk about. I'm not sure if I would want to take them out of the equation as like the facilitator maybe that could help. But where I'm sometimes struggling is with like, oh, the PM is the CEO of the product and decides everything about the product. Because what is their background? But if we talk about, how do you know that as a PM? The point I want to make is if we talk about facilitation, I have to say, I believe we always talk about symptom fixing and not problem fixing. Because let's go back to my example. If leaders would start talking to teams directly and teams would stop working because they're getting overwhelmed with meetings and requests and stuff like this. I mean, what does that show? It shows how fucked up communication in that company is, right? As simple as that. And the thing is, it doesn't matter how many people you have in between, whether it's product managers, design ops, products ops, or stuff like this, it's just splitting up the problem to different levels. And yeah, some people are better in managing them. Some people don't. Some people make good decisions. Some people make bad decisions. But at the end of the day, I'm a big fan of having a direct, smooth communication. Look at Google. Remember when we were back in 2018, I think, at the conference in Zurich, where the Google VP product of Gmail said, we have 30 engineers for one PM. We don't need more PMs. We try to reduce PMs. We don't want PMs. We want the teams to be empowered and to make decisions. Still, they have one. And there is things that this PM might do. I'm saying this from a point where there are certain things that I wouldn't have a designer and an engineer do. And I'm not saying that that should be the job of a PM, but it's, for example, going through certain documentation and regulations, working with the legal teams, working with the KYC teams, to figuring certain things out, where I'd rather have the designer focus on the interaction with the user and with the people that use the product to be able to focus on that innovation. So sometimes someone needs to surface this. And could it be the legal team directly? Yes. But then the legal team lacks a lot of the engineering knowledge and the product knowledge that maybe a product manager has. I mean, you need domain experts. That's my definition on that. So domain experts should interact as interfaces, of course, in combination with, for example, a leadership team or a leader to make business decisions. The question is always, who makes the final business decision at the end of the day? And we see PMs struggling with that. I used to struggle with that as well. And I remember you were struggling with that as well as a design lead who were owning the product design and brand design. So we're always facing a point where business decisions are hard to make and where more people are getting involved. And at the point where you have many more people getting involved into the process, you will fall out of the equation as a decision maker. You're giving input, but at the end of the day, you will get the result. So and then the question is, what's your job? Raising the problem that then someone tells you what to do? I mean, then the person can directly take over, right? Yeah, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it shouldn't be like this, probably. Of course, I mean, like, I don't believe that the holy executive C-suite can take better decisions than the person working directly on the product, right? So I also wouldn't want the CEO to take some of these critical decisions. I think it should sit with the teams. And I think the autonomy should be within the teams. I mean, the bigger the company gets, of course, the more you need to split up work, the more you break down products and teams and stuff like this. I'm not against that at all. But the question is still, how is the communication from the bottom going to the top and from the top going to the bottom? And how many interfaces do you need in between? And that's the core question that I would like to drop, because I've been working for smaller companies and also for bigger companies. And I see that that's the problem that I believe exists out there, is that there is a layer that is not clearly defined in its role and position and job, as well as it's not equipped with enough decision-making power. That's a problem. That's a problem that we're having. And the question is, how can we solve that problem? And I believe, to think more about what my role as product manager is and what the next certificate and big thing is to get better, is not solving the company's problem. The company's problems are always communication lines and processes. And I believe that lean processes and reducing communication layers makes companies faster and more efficient. And therefore, I believe the product management role itself, in the classic way as it used to be, doesn't make sense anymore. In my world. Yeah. And I mean, lean is proven, right? It doesn't make sense to have a ton of layers of decision-making and so on. It's important to have, I mean, again, leadership comes down to a setting, a clear vision, communicating it so that everyone knows it and then works towards one goal. So wherever you sit in the organization, you shouldn't have to think, should I do this or that? Because if it's clear what direction you need to take, if it's clear what metrics you need to move, you will work towards that goal. Exactly. Right? The more time you spend with planning, it's like the 80-20 rule, right? If you spend 80% of your time in doing good and clear planning and communication, execution won't be a problem. But unfortunately, we are trapped in the opposite. People spend 20% of their time in planning, maximum, and the rest is blocked with execution, back and forth, bug fixing, not being able to make a decision, go back and forth. I mean, we all know that crap, right? So the core is still planning and communication at the end of the day that needs to be in place to make people's work life easier. I think this is what it is about. And it starts at the top, in my opinion. In bigger companies, let's talk about companies with two, three, four, five, and more than thousands of people, it's hard to establish such a mindset. Of course. And my message today goes not into this direction, but especially smaller companies that are in growth phase, even those middle-sized companies. If you are in a growth phase, if you are trying to establish or streamline processes, you need to think about whom you want to give what kind of responsibility. And equipping someone with no direct decision making in terms of design, programming, or managing people, and even taking away the business decision responsibility when it comes to tough decisions, what's the role? What's the job of this person? Why is it in the company? It doesn't make sense to me. Then rather, don't hire for new product managers and streamline your processes, streamline your communication and the goal you're working towards, your vision, your mission, and make sure that the leadership team is clearly communicating with the teams who are executing and ensure that these processes are working rather than hiring new people and putting more communication layers on top. I mean, I will conclude for myself generally that it is just important to figure out what you need in your company and what your teams need and so on. Whatever it is, right? And whatever the problem is, it's about like figuring that out. If it's communication, work on your communication. RPM is not going to solve it. If it's about decision making, figure out how you want to do decision making and don't just like hire a person in the hope to kind of solve it. I think that's the point, right? And if I need, if I see that my problem is communication and the fact that I need someone who has like deep user experience to take decisions on that, I hire that person. If they then hold the name of a product manager, let it be. If it's then the designer taking those decisions, let it also be, right? I think I'm generally in favor of taking this step away from these like, oh, what does this role do and what does that role do and what does blah, blah, blah? Because that's where I think we also messed up a lot in the history. It's like, oh, we kept telling product managers that they are so important in the company and that they are the ones that hold everything together. And that also hurts a lot of innovation coming from the teams. I saw engineering teams completely useless because they've just been sitting there waiting for the PM to tell them what to do. And the only thing they would do is like, oh no, I can't do it, it's too complicated. And not like really think about the solution. I saw designers delivering shit work because, oh yeah, I was told I need to do this. Did you believe it? No, but the PM told me and who has the ownership? And this is like where maybe our perspectives are probably a little bit different because I always had the feeling of like, PMs almost get too much ownership or at least perceived ownership within the organization, while sometimes they lack certain skills. And then you end up in the situation of like, oh yeah, this is the roadmap and where is it coming from? Oh yeah, the PM made it up. And there's a nice saying, four eyes are smarter than two eyes. So two heads are smarter than one, right? And the group and the teams are usually smart people, right? And if there's only one person who knows in quotes better what to do and how to solve a problem, yeah, then you take a lot of responsibility on only one person. So do you want to do that? The swarm intelligence doesn't disappoint statistically. But so if you're a PM, don't quit your job or if you're a leader, don't just fire your PM. But like, I think work around or work out what the problems are and how to solve them and make sure that you leverage the team and don't have everything sit on this one person that doesn't even have direct responsibility for the team. And if you want to, if you want to deliver, if you want to deliver good stuff that makes the lives of your customers better, you need to empower the teams. That in 99% of the cases, it starts with the better communication, a clearer vision, mission and direction that you need to go. And this is what I would focus on. And whether this is a PM or not at the end of the day, who gets the work done or a senior vice president of product or design or something doesn't matter. But you need to have a person who drives this change process or who at least starts it. I definitely agree on that. At least. I say it again, at least, I can't stress that enough. So should we now change the name and the subtitle of this podcast to the Non-Product Management Podcast or is it still? The Not-Product Bakery. The No-Product Bakery. No. No. What we're going to do is we're going to say goodbye. And remember, there is a subscribe button and there's also a way to criticize everything we said. You can just say we're the... I am the worst. Go on the internet, please. Don't forget to link the Product Bakery. I hope to see you all next time. Bye bye. Bye. This was the Product Bakery. All links can be found in the podcast description and make sure to follow and subscribe for weekly episodes on all podcast platforms as well as YouTube.