Drive to Survive: from Kick-off to Live

When not sitting on an office chair and chatting with floating heads on MS Teams, sometimes I sit on a sofa and watch TV. In full transparency, I usually do this so as to not think about work, but when watching Netflix's Drive to Survive, it was hard to ignore the product manager parallels.

If you're unfamiliar with the series, the cameras follow F1's ten teams as they compete against one another, fighting for position on the track and in the points table. As well as having two drivers on the track, each team is also headed up by a team principle. The team principle is the one in charge, responsible for the team's performance and personnel, and communicating with investors and sponsors.

Watching the various principles lead their teams through pre-season, race weekends and everything in between, it's hard to ignore the similarity with my own role. Of course, my role features far fewer fast cars, unless you include my Hyundi i10 parked on the road outside (which I definitely wouldn't).

Here are five ‘Drive to Survive’ product manager lessons that I have learned:

CONTENT WARNING: while not ground-breaking or original, the 'lessons' do serve as useful reminders when performing the product manager role. Beware that there are also several car puns.

1) Setting the goal

Haas is a relatively new F1 team led by Guenther Steiner. Given their youth and inexperience, Steiner sets the goal to win the 'midfield' (i.e. the best of the rest).

Like Steiner, a product manager needs to set a clear and appropriate goal; one that is realistic and achievable. This isn't to say the goal shouldn't be ambitious, just that it needs to be ambitious relative to current standings. Haas and Steiner certainly have longer-term ambitions, but winning the midfield is appropriate to their current position.

Once this achievable but ambitious goal is set, the team and stakeholders then need to be united behind it. In Haas' case, a win may not be standing on the podium, but simply finishing high enough to score points (only the top 10 drivers score points on race-day). Like an F1 team, a scrum team will have investors and sponsors, and they need to share in the team's vision. In turn, this will help to align expectations of the team and what success means for a given product or service.

2) Communicating with stakeholders

Throughout the series, we see various team principles talking with parties outside of the immediate team, whether it's owners and investors, sponsors or the media.

This is an important reminder that, as stakeholder managers and team representatives, we need to be honest when talking with internal or external stakeholders. However, it also shows how to be strategic, tailoring the message and style to different audiences. After all, there is a difference between honesty and letting words fall out of an exhaust-shaped mouth.

And of course, when I say 'talking', I also mean listening. Despite being co-owner of the Mercedes team as well as team principle, we still see Toto Wolf listening to what those outside of the team have to say. Like Wolf, we should actively listen and seek to understand the concern and feedback, even if we don't get to do so on a private plane.

3) Knowing what you need to know

Williams is a team that has struggled to recapture historic success and, in the first seasons of Drive to Survive, is led by Clare Williams, daughter of the team's founder. We see Clare, surrounded by engineers in the F1 pre-season, explaining about the car build and how she tries to understand enough about each of its various aspects.

'Understanding enough' is an undervalued concept. Too often we feel pressured to understand every aspect of a project, but in a team of specialists and experts, this is fruitless and inefficient. Whether it's design, architecture, research or development, a product manager will be hard stretched to know the ins and outs of all areas.

Like Williams, a product manager should be focused on knowing enough to engage in all aspects of the project and make decisions where needed, and to discuss the work with stakeholders. A strategy which also complements team empowerment, rather than micro-management.

4) Right people in the right roles

Sebastian Vettel is a four-times world champion, but that didn't stop Ferrari team principle, Mattia Binotto, from replacing him for the 2021 season.

It's the team principle's job to ensure the team is represented on the track by the right drivers. In Ferrari's case, Binotto explained there was "no specific reason" for the decision to end Vettel's contract, but it looked as if Vettel no longer fit with the team's roadmap and vision.

While not solely the responsibility of a product manager, it is important to understand where a change or more support may be needed in line with the team's vision, and that this may often be a difficult decision. However, not having the right people in the right roles will put a speed limit on a team's progress and interfere with its ability to achieve.

5) Iterative improvements

In each race season, we hear principles discussing what can be done to improve the car. Each week, teams will examine performance data and collect feedback from their drivers, and then look at how they might improve the car's performance to get the most out of it.

Like a team principle, a product manager must make decisions on tactical improvements until longer-term strategic changes can be implemented. And even when strategic change may be an option, doing so will likely impede the delivery of immediate results.

Therefore, product managers should remember that it's not always about a complete rebuild (despite this often being more enticing). Rather, it’s necessary to look at what can be done in the short-term to maximise performance; which components are working well, and which need to be tweaked? As in F1, it may not be the case that the whole build needs to be scrapped and, in fact, there is a decent base from which to start.