Good Leadership is Hard, Great Product Leadership is Harder

Good leadership can be challenging but the practice of great Product leadership throws up even more challenges.

Product Management is an emergent function, making Product or the role of Product Management amorphous to many, in many industries and organisations. In many organisations, a dedicated Product Management function often emerges well after other functional parts of the business have been established. Unfortunately, sometimes this new product function is not always welcomed. ?

A further complication arises because the core of Product work, its activities and responsibilities, shift depending on the company culture. The boundaries of Product Management are often unclear, always contentious and fraught with potential conflict. While there is increased dialogue around becoming Product-Led, many organisations are still navel-gazing and missing the real possibilities and opportunities.

As it stands, good leadership requires a core of steel but the practice of great Product leadership requires full body armour.

Why is good leadership hard?

Good leadership begins with an acute?sense of self-awareness, an understanding of what lies beneath our murky surface. We are, after all, complex beings, who at times may be volatile, unpredictable, emotional, and laden with biases. Learning about our own impulses and triggers so we respond more appropriately to others, and the situation is what enables good leadership.

This suggests that?good leadership is a practice?rather than a title or a role. It is a set of deliberate actions that we have to learn to perform so that we can guide, support and nurture others, solve situational problems and deliver the right outcomes for our people and our organisation.

What makes the practice of good leadership difficult is that?it is constant. The perpetual commitment required to understand and manage our own responses and behaviours, and to work with others, means that the practice of leadership is often challenging and tiring.

Apart from practising self-awareness, good leadership is focused on its pursuit of goals, irrespective of the distractions and the impediments. Good leadership, therefore,?requires a strong orientating purpose?or according to Daniel Goleman “the ability to resist distraction so that you don’t gravitate back to that object; and the ability to concentrate on the future goal and imagine how good you will feel when you achieve it .”

The practice of good leadership is hard because it “isn't taught in school or after school clubs, or even on sports teams. ” Instead, good leadership?“is learned through diligent self-inquiry, and constantly practising the art of being flexible in the way you communicate and lead others. ” It's learned through observation, experimentation and practice.

Product, an emergent function

The story goes that Product Management was birthed in the 1930s, as a consequence of McElroy’s memo. It has since transformed significantly from its initial premise of brand differentiation to value creation in a constantly changing, hyper-competitive market. Today, the Product frameworks and techniques used to perform our Product duties are vast, our language somewhat exclusive, making it difficult for others outside the Product function to participate and contribute effectively.

Dare I say, the mindset and attitude required to do Product work are also different to other types of work in Finance, Marketing, or Sales. We approach each task as a learning opportunity, knowing that failure is inherent in the results we produce. And, we have to be entirely comfortable with that.?

While Product Management has grown up, it has progressed faster than some organisations are capable of adopting. What was once a Marketing or Sales or even Project Management responsibility may now be a Product responsibility. This shift in responsibility may have caused friction and potentially the rejection of the new Product organ in the organisation.

Great Product leadership is harder

Great Product leadership in non-Product-Led organisations becomes difficult to pursue when we couple the challenges of practising good leadership with the challenges of practising Product Management.

Product leaders have to navigate both. They’re on a tight-rope; peddling hard to be a good leader in the organisation, carrying a deep well of practice knowledge and skills, while simultaneously protecting and empowering their teams to be able to discover and deliver valuable products. Not only do Product leaders have to lead the organisation, and their teams, their Product leadership credibility lies in the ‘Technical Product’ know-how and their ability to converse in the Product language with authority.

A General Manager, without the Product chops leading teams of Product people, is never going to win over great Product folks.

Becoming a great Product Leader

The pathway to the practice of Product leadership is the willingness to disrupt the current status quo, to get attention on the value of the Product practice. Disruption comes in many forms and needs to be done in a manner that does not alienate important strategic partners across the organisation. Disruption means that Product leaders need to step out of their own comfort zone, where they continue to engage with their own kind in their own exclusive language, and get curious about how best to work with others. The work of Product leadership often begins with the questions, “how are we seen by others and what can we do to make ourselves more visible”? This requires changing the narrative and being able to clearly tell a product story that links directly to the organisational strategy. Product Leaders may not always sit at the executive table. However, they have enough informal authority in terms of their knowledge and expertise to confidently enter into dialogues that can start to shift the mindsets of key stakeholders both inside and outside of their organisation.

Becoming a great Product Leader requires tenacity, creative resourcefulness and a willingness to self-authorise. Talking and more importantly listening to others, being willing to question one’s own and others’ assumptions, clearly articulating the purpose and value of the Product function, adapting to the shifting context whilst holding onto what is essential and being highly capable in the technical aspects of the role whilst being ultra-aware and skilled to deal with the human condition.