Despite defining moments in the history of product management, I believe we’re yet to scratch the surface of the complexities of the discipline. The job of a product manager continues to evolve as the discipline grows and organisations establish their definitions of what product management means to them.

I’ve had the opportunity of engaging and working with hiring managers from startups of all stages as well as larger organisations and a lot of them seem to have similar feedback about their experiences with product management teams. I found it quite interesting that their feedback usually trends more towards negative than positive. They always seemed to have very high expectations that ended up getting ruined; very similar to #whatIorderedvswhatIgot scenarios in fashion. A quick review of PM job descriptions across diverse organisations reveals that a lot seem to be left to the interpretation.

Not familiar with #whatIorderedvswhatIgot? It's a hashtag that was coined to describe a comparison of an original outfit order and the product that the customer received. Here’s a great example:

So, why does it seem that hiring managers have different expectations of a PM’s job function from the PM’s understanding?

I have a simple answer to this question but before I tell you my answer, let’s talk about some of the feedback I’ve received from hiring managers and organisation leads. I’ll let you guess which company size raised which issue. (Hint: There are many right answers).

Did you enjoy doing the mapping? Awesome.

So, why do hiring managers and product managers seem to have different expectations and understanding of the role of a product manager, especially in startups – AMBIGUITY!

Ambiguity in defining the PMs role typically leads to misinterpretation which of course leads to #whatIorderedvswhatIgot. This is also a reflection of the general lack of convergence on the roles of product managers across industries and GTM strategies.

Factors that influence the role of product managers include:

1. the company stage,
2. the product stage of its lifecycle,
3. the company size (team),
4. how fragmented the product team is,
5. and most importantly, the company’s GTM strategy.

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Ambiguity goes both ways. I also took some feedback from product managers on ambiguity and other key issues from their experience.

• Copy and paste JDs with unclear roles and responsibilities – headless chicken syndrome.
• Even more headless chicken behaviour– Your product vision is too convoluted – can we just choose a direction and focus please?
• Your onboarding was (almost) non-existent because fire-fighter is your middle name and we want you to “hit the ground running”
• You don’t have a team to bounce ideas off either because startup or IC in large company.
• You’re overwhelmed because everyone assumes your job includes everything from presales to support. You’re the lead, the analyst, the designer, the no-code dev all rolled in one.
• Because you’re so busy doing work that you really shouldn’t be doing, you have less time to do real product management and then your top-line go “you’re not pulling your weight”. Errr, please, I’m pulling the weight of ten other people!
• You don’t have enough time for R&D because everything must happen NOW!
• You have minimal or zero access to market data because 1- no time to conduct detailed customer engagement activities and 2 – org doesn’t pay for the required research tools.
• Your top-lines have you chasing metrics that don’t actually contribute to bottom line (read vanity metrics).
• Your company can hold meetings for Africa! When do you even have time to execute?
• You have no authority and not enough influence and your management is busy with the latest shiny initiative (which unfortunately isn’t your product or feature) so no help form above.
• Your team lacks representation at C-level meaning, you are basically errand kids.
• Your company takes ‘leading without authority’ to the next level. You have no say in key decisions and the small social capital you have is almost finished. You’re now best friends with the Domino’s phone admin because na every Friday you dey buy pizza.
• And my personal fave! The tech bro salary you were promised has entered voicemail.
• Oh! Let’s add this – Company-wide SAFE Agile adoption. You said?!

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So, how can you avoid ambiguity in defining your expectations from product managers?
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Step 1 – Understand the job function.

As with any job, it is important to clearly understand the roles and responsibilities expected of the job function. There are multiple ways to approach this including:

1. Walking a mile in their shoes. This is especially applicable to startups. As a founder, you embody the product vision. Sometimes, you need to play the part for some time to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for the job function such that when you are ready to hire for the role, you are able to clearly articulate your expectations.
2. Research. Read and learn about industry best practices, and tailor your job functions to fit your company.
3. Hire an experienced general to help you build an efficient team. You can’t know everything and as founders and leaders, you have a lot taking your time. Hire experienced product leaders to help you build your front line team.
4. Outsource to industry experts like ProduqtEdge. Because PM-as-a-Service organisations and communities engage with and operate between both employers and employees, we are uniquely positioned to understand your product needs and help you not only define tailored job descriptions and expectations but also help you populate your teams with qualified product managers that have been vetted and trained by our seasoned professionals.
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Step 2 – Clarify the responsibilities of the job function.

Now that you have some idea of what a product manager’s job function is, the next step is to determine the job function of a product manager in your organisation depending on your company stage, your product’s stage in its lifecycle, the size of your team, your available budget, and your GTM strategy.

I’ve found that an effective way to do this is by taking a bottom-up approach rather than a top-to-bottom approach. I’ll share my cheat sheet.

1. First, I define my product vision from an AS-IS / TO-BE (Near future) / BHA-TO-BE (future future) perspective similar to Janna Bastow’s Now/Next/Future Roadmap.
2. Then, I take all my learnings from industry best practices and create a long list of tactical activities required to achieve my product vision as well as a list of critical product management skills.
3. Then I group these activities into activity types along the lines of the critical product management skills. At this point, these tactical activities do not consider the stage of the product yet.
4. Now, I bring in product strategy. What is our approach to growth? Are we leading with the product, sales, community or marketing? Then I review my list from 3. And map the activity types required to execute our GTM approach.
5. At this point, the PLC comes into play. I do a three-way mapping from the tactical activities to the GTM approach and the Product Lifecycle. As defined in my PM vs PLC model, the product needs vary as it progresses through the PLC which also reflects on the product managers.

This approach gives me a holistic view of what my product needs to go from AS-IS to BHA-TO-BE. It helps me clearly define the roles and responsibilities for each role which in turn helps to manage my expectations by defining OKRs and KPIs that are easy to measure. my team also has a clear understanding of what is expected of them and everyone is happy!

What’s your approach to hiring product teams?

Hit me up if you’d like to chat - https://www.linkedin.com/in/yewande-sulaiman/

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