Notes on Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Lenny's Podcast)

I love Lenny Rachitsky podcast. When an episode launches that I know I'll get questions on, I do an exercise of reading the transcript and taking notes. I collaborated with Melissa Perri on the Brian Chesky episode.

The latest Marty Cagan episode is going to raise some eyebrows. Over the years, I have sometimes struggled with "getting" exactly where Marty is/was coming from while being a general fan of his work. This episode was highly clarifying for me.

Here are my notes. I hope you find them helpful.

Marty Cagan (00:08:29):

…..My goal is different, the SVPG. We are also trying to help the product community, but it's interesting when I watch your interviews, you're trying to pry out of people what's special about what they do, which is what I want to hear. But interestingly, what I'm looking for is not what's different, it's what's the same. What we are all about is sharing the principles and the practices that are used consistently by the best product companies. In fact, we have a heuristic, we've never made a secret of this.

The first thing that comes to mind here is the reverse Anna Karenina principle (relayed to me by Joshua Arnold). The principle states that dysfunctional companies have very similar patterns, and successful companies have evolved unique ways of working. To extend the idea, we would see “principles and practices used consistently by the best product companies” as necessarily context-free and unlikely to explain the true DNA of those companies. Identifying the broad patterns and principles is relatively easy, but explaining how they came to life in certain contexts is much harder. A great example is companies that tried to copy the Spotify Model, Amazon's WBR, etc.

I also find myself looking for objective criteria for “best”.

I regularly check in with friends/acquaintances at companies frequently lumped under the “best” category, and their assessment often differs from public perception. I’ve also found myself idolizing certain companies only to discover, years later, that things were not what they seemed from the outside. It turns out that the type of approach required for Context A may not work for Context B.

Overall, this was a clarifying statement in understanding Marty and SVPG’s approach. You realize that you’re getting common patterns across a sample of companies the team believes to be the best, which is awesome (but comes with a footnote). Marty is a staunch evangelist for what he has seen work and wants to spread it far and wide. Common principles are very helpful, but they come with a caveat (which I'm positive Marty would agree with).

Marty Cagan (00:12:48):

…There is no question that a lot of companies overhired during the pandemic. That was easy to see even while it was going on. And it's not just that they overhired, a lot of them lowered the bar.

I’m concerned about the “lowered the bar” statement because it is unclear whether the people who over-hired were “above” the bar themselves and whether they possessed the skills and experience to scale their companies in ways that could leverage diverse skills. This gives a “get out of jail” card to people that I am not sure they deserve.

It’s easy to point your finger at the economic climate and interest rates and then rationalize that somehow shit happened, and you accidentally lowered the bar. It is much harder to accept that perhaps you didn’t have the requisite skills and that you failed at fostering an environment conducive to sustainable and responsible growth. This narrative is easily latched on to by people prone to pointing fingers at others and believing everything can be boiled down to individual competence—those pesky, less competent people—instead of looking at themselves.

Marty Cagan (00:14:44):

…So there's this general appreciation that maybe we overdid it here with all of these roles. And of course I'm talking about agile coaches and product owners and product ops and business analysts and all these assistant product manager types.

Who is “we”? And why? Lumping together agile coaches, product owners (a Scrum title), product ops, and business analysts (wait, did BAs make a comeback?) seems to be a broad stroke. There are many reasons we’ve seen a proliferation of roles, and I agree that companies sometimes patch up problems instead of addressing them head-on. For example, patching a leadership hole with product ops is easy. Conversely, there are thoughtful ways to use product ops as a small platform/enabling team to supercharge empowered teams.

But again, imagine a frustrated leader who is distant from the work hearing this. They are easily seduced by the narrative of “well, people were lazy and dropping the ball, so we suddenly have all these people who we don’t need! Marty told us so!” I can see that leader making stupid decisions.

…the reality is with remote employees, both velocity and innovation have taken a real hit. Now we can talk about, don't get me wrong, I don't think we're ever going to go back to the days of big companies having almost all co-located teams.

An interesting area of research is to look at the companies where velocity and innovation haven’t taken a hit. I guess SVPG is looking into these practices, but they are worth exploring. No, it hasn’t taken a real hit everywhere and to the same degree. And yes, there are things leaders can do to adapt their approach to leverage the best of the situation and minimize the downsides. Again, this statement will be seized upon by people who aren't thoughtful enough and rationalize doing bad things.

Marty Cagan (00:15:49):

…And then on top of that, if you get outside of the Silicon Valley bubble, it's even worse because they have been investing at these companies, especially the big companies in all these extra roles.

The picture isn’t pretty in Silicon Valley, either. It may not be “extra roles,” but Silicon Valley was no slouch at throwing people at problems without addressing the underlying issues holding the companies back. I think this is what Cagan means by "even worse" but it is worth noting.

Marty Cagan (00:17:51):

And bottom line is today I think everybody, especially outside in those big process and role heavy companies, they need to take a hard look at how they build products and how they serve their customers. And they need to look harder at how the best companies do this with so much less proportional spend and so much more real return and really take a fresh look at how to best meet the needs of their customers. That's what transformation is about, is moving to work like that. And the ones that do that well I think are the ones with the best chance to survive.

I generally agree with this, and the advice extends to companies that pride themselves on low process and fewer roles (because plenty of those screw up also, and often do so while pointing at their hero companies and claiming because X does it X way, they need to do it that way as well).

Companies everywhere will need to evolve. And 30 years ago many of these stodgy enterprises were "the best", and people talked about how they operated, but they failed to evolve. It is a cycle and no company is immune.

I would add that many of these large enterprises have skilled leaders and a strong, customer-centric culture—in many cases, far exceeding that of the Silicon Valley companies marked as “the best.” Now, they don’t have other chops and skills. They are lagging in many regards. They didn’t have the luxury of starting as a greenfield tech/product-first company. But when I observe the rate at which many of them adapt proportionally, it is much faster than people realize. Compared to the SV companies that have all of these riches and resources, they are actually “transforming” much faster than the SV companies are adapting…proportionally, at least.

Marty Cagan (00:19:49):

…And I bet you've heard a hundred variations of the mealy mouth, squishy, I facilitate this and I do some communication and I herd the cats and I'm listening to that going, man, I would not want to try to defend that job to the CEO.

I wouldn’t either. However, I also doubt that the CEO understands the degree to which the reason these roles have increased may be a result of the funding structure, the architecture, incentives, etc. They've held the problem in place, whether they know it or not. We need to help them understand this.

I see many people who have been thrust into these tactical roles, and they frequently have so much more to offer. I’m not so quick to jump to the overpaid assessment. As a default, I’d prefer to start with "underutilized" and potentially part of a big hiring effort with no real plan to develop them, as well as having a sensible organizational chart.

Marty Cagan (00:24:09):

The biggest example of that is that they carry this title product manager because the whole world largely, thanks to you, knows it's cool, but they're not doing any of the role and they don't have any of the skills. Now of course, what really bothers me is it's not that hard if they are motivated. It's not that hard for them to develop the skills, and that's what I talk to people about. You can raise your game so that you actually can contribute at this level. That's what you should do for your own career, but by the way, and not accidentally, that's what your company needs you to do.

My observation here is a bit more nuanced. More often than not, I'd say they have the skills, but those skills are underutilized and not supported structurally. That said, I also agree with Marty that you can typically do things in any environment to at least hone your skills for the next job you apply to. It may not be fun. You may be doing it while you play the product part you’ve been given, but no will typically stop you from framing outcomes and helping the team get around the “loop” of shipping and learning.

Bias note: I'm a mix of European collectivism and US individualism, so my response here is pretty predictable.

Marty Cagan (00:26:51):

…And furthermore, in almost every company I see with feature team product managers, they have a boatload of project managers anyway.

Sidenote: Look at some of the vaunted tech/product companies and count the ratio of technical program managers, etc., to teams. Granted, these often exist to insulate the vaunted teams from the logistics of shipping things in the org, but it is worth noting.

Lenny (00:29:27):

Let me actually read a quote from you where you talk about this exact point. You wrote, "I have been warning for several years that delivery team, product owners and feature team product managers are likely to be facing a reckoning as companies realize that these roles are not what they thought they were. From what I can tell, that reckoning has begun and I'm expecting GenAI will only compound this."

This reckoning is happening everywhere—in the “best” companies (often accompanied by highly delusional and out-of-touch rationalizations).

What’s going on? What is the reckoning? And is there a risk we are perpetuating these narratives and fanning the flames with broad-reaching statements that lack context? I worry about this. Layoffs have been described as a contagion. Confirmation bias can be extremely damaging, and people latch onto certain ideas to support whatever they want to do.

Marty Cagan (00:31:01):

…At a minimum, I tell people, and I've seen this countless times, at a minimum, your company will appreciate it and probably promote you because you will be one of the few that actually understands these things. Hopefully even more than that, they'll say, hey, why don't we try running a set of teams this way and see how we do? So it can happen from the ground up too.

Bottom-up change without top-down aircover can be a career liability. Proceed very carefully. I love the call-out to "safe to fail" experiments here ("Why don't we try ______"). Structure your experiments carefully.

Marty Cagan (00:34:14):

They can if they're lucky enough to know where to go. Obviously, I'm biased. You're biased too. We're biased on this, but people need to take more control of their career and really use their judgment, try to figure out what do you want to be if you want to be in the product world? What do you want to be? What kind of a product manager do you want to be? And if you want to stay, fine, but if you want to do this, then there are good resources for sure. There are good resources out there. And of course, I'm hoping more and more people do that.

Great advice! I love the appreciation of potential bias and the prompt to take control of one's career and think critically.

Marty Cagan (00:38:48):

….I'm living in a bubble. Silicon Valley is not like most of the world here. And of course I realized that why not? Why don't companies in Arkansas and India and everywhere else have the access to the same methods and tools and techniques? And so that became the inspiration for Silicon Valley Product Group, was to spread those things.

I love how Marty addresses this and clarifies his goal of spreading the things he has seen work to other places. I’ve noticed lately that interesting ways of working emerge from other parts of the world, which are often more aligned with the culture in those places. They might be more collectivist. They might cater to different power differentials. They might be more design-infused or appreciate different forms of leadership.

I sometimes worry about product management colonization—or the assumption that all things Silicon Valley are good and effective and need to be spread everywhere (vs. highly contextual and more fragile than people expect). I also worry about hubris—that ways of working should not be questioned, and there are unequivocally better/worse ways to operate. Marty notes elsewhere in the interview that he does question methods, so that's good.

Marty Cagan (00:41:48):

So there's a bigger reason I think so many sales driven companies exist, is that most of the time in those companies, the CEOs are not product people and that's why they run that way. And until and unless the CEO decides this is not very good, usually because some good product company comes along and takes away their customers, that's probably not going to change.

And frankly, when you’re printing money and you’ve been printing money for a long time, why change? The same thing will happen (and is happening) to big, famous tech companies. Inertia is like that. As mentioned earlier, in many ways, I’m seeing that these money printers are faced with disruption or proportionately making faster progress than hubris-filled tech companies.

Lenny (00:43:16):

Reminds me of something your colleague Christian said on our podcast episode of how lucky are we to get to solve people's problems and help them?

100%. This is what I love about product.

Marty Cagan (00:46:08):

…Empowerment does not mean you set up this product team and they go decide what to work on. No, that would just be anarchy, right? You'd have 50 teams doing 50 things. Instead, empowerment means the leaders do their job, come up with the bets, and then the teams are able to figure out the best way to solve those problems.

Determining bets (and problems) is critical here. Where the line is drawn is highly contextual. One team’s bet is another team’s feature request.

Marty Cagan (01:02:40):

That was the biggest pain for the book was... 'Cause honestly, I had dodged that question for 20 years. If you look at any of my writing before starting on this book, I just said, "Look, do you want to work like the best or do you want to work like the rest?" That's how we referred to it, the best versus the rest because there is no word, there is no name that talks about the common principles with all the best companies. So we would just say, do you want to work like the best or not? But when I started to write the book, I'm like, okay, I can't just say work like the best. We have to have some name for this, but I don't know if you've come across this Lenny, but you don't want to coin a new term if you can avoid it.

This was a breakthrough in my understanding of Marty Cagan (and also what has triggered my occasional critiques of Marty Cagan). Especially in my role at Amplitude, where I got to work with so many different companies worldwide, I realized that the best/rest dichotomy was a lot more fragile than I originally thought.

Before working at Amplitude, I made tables that described the best on the right and the rest on the left, and I was proud of myself. But as I encountered different companies in the world, I started to realize how contextual it was. I also realized the cracks in the shiny veneer of many of the “best” companies, yet the degree to which the best was being hung over people’s heads. It caused a lot of introspection. Success involves capabilities, competencies, supporting environment, and context.

But this clarifies Marty’s perspective, and I can’t fault him for this approach. He’s passionate about sharing what he has seen work, from within the context in which he has seen it work, and he is unabashed about this. This is a great mission and important mission.