The Innkeeper

"A Product Manager is the CEO of the product."

This catchy analogy has been incessantly raised and refuted, for the simple reason that Product managers never have as much authority over their Product and/or its stakeholders, as everybody else would like to believe they do. This is especially true for Product managers and/or Product Owners who have just started the journey.

Therefore, based on my frugal experience with Product Management (and my substantial experience with analogies), I'll try to come up with something better than that - A Product Manager, as the Innkeeper of the Product, and the Product being the Inn;

The crucial difference between the CEO and the Innkeeper is that while an innkeeper is responsible for driving and owning every change that takes place in their inn, not every innkeeper would have the same power to dictate the strategic direction of the product as a CEO would... in simple terms, the innkeeper can move the furniture around but can't independently decide to change condos to penthouse suites, and need to do their best to accommodate the needs of their guests, within one's own capability.

In our innkeeper's inn, are 2 main groups of people:

1. The Crew (the Tech & Support team) - The upkeep of the inn makes their livelihood, and they spend most of their days here - tidying the rooms, mending the cracks in the walls and plugging the leaks in the pipes. If they find time from this incessant maintenance, they spend their hours meeting the innkeeper's "requests" for improvements - new chairs in the lobby, new flowers in the corridor, new register on the counter, new pillars for the ceiling. And yet, the guests rarely notice that the crew is hard at work to just make sure that the inn's roof doesn't fall over in the middle of the night. The crew complain amidst themselves about how the ungrateful innkeeper keeps finding problems from seemingly irrelevant nooks and crannies, and about how the guests couldn't care to leave a tip.
2. The Guests (Users) - They only stop by for a few minutes, or a few hours at most. They are solely there for their own comfort, and will take little to no interest in improving the inn. Some guests might threaten to go to another inn, others can't. If the crew has done a great job, they may gladly visit again, but they won't even care to help a crew member in so much as moving a couch. The guests love complaining and cribbing about the slightest of things which they think are wrong with the inn - for even a crack in the paint of the wall, the innkeeper can expect his desk to be ticking with complaints, which need to be addressed "on priority" with a pasted smile. The worst kinds of guests seem to relish breaking a chair, scribbling profanity on the walls and clogging the pipes, while the crew groan and sigh - more tasks from the innkeeper to clean up the mess.

(Disclaimer - The analogous insensitivity of the stakeholders mentioned here is purely fictitious. Any resemblance to stakeholders of any Product, active or demised, is purely coincidental.)

And then comes our innkeeper...he needs to be a good host to the guests and ensure that they enjoy their frugal stay at the inn, but the poor chap probably wouldn't know how to use a broomstick if something went wrong, and constantly relies on his crew to fulfill his duties. Every complaint, from a busted pipe flooding the floors, to even the odd paint chip in a wall, needs a mental arithmetic in his head - is this a problem that's even worth bringing up to the crew? is this a problem to solve now or later?

With this analogy established, people often presume that a good innkeeper must always listen to the guests and must give utmost importance to their needs, but given the limitations that the poor innkeeper has, there is only so much that they can (or should) do:

• An innkeeper should give the guests importance, but should never have them in-charge. Guests don't understand, or care about the structural integrity of the Inn, and would take no responsibility if their design ideas lead to the roof falling over. The innkeeper needs to be decisive enough, and informed enough, to speak for the guests' needs, and yet take them only seriously enough to keep his inn (and his job) intact.
• As mentioned above, the innkeeper can't independently decide to change condos to penthouse suites, and thus should not promise a suite to the guests when it doesn't exist, no matter how much the guests demand one. A guest's complaint letters have no consideration for the inn's budget, thus he needn't make a hue & cry with his crew, just because the guest asks for something which the crew knows to be beyond its capacity.
• The crew may often be occupied with maintenance and renovation items that have no bearing on the wishlist of the guests. If the innkeeper doesn't understand them, he would nonetheless need to trust his crew to have a substantial reason to pursue them, and even refuse guests outright when they're looking for the crew for their own?demands. After all, the delay for fixing a broken pipe is a significantly smaller inconvenience than the cleanup of a flooded floor.

With that said, it should seem counter-intuitive for the innkeeper to put the guest on a pedestal all the time. Sure, the very purpose of the inn is to serve its guests, but the important thing to note here is that listening to the guests is rarely the same as giving utmost importance to their needs. Therefore, the priorities of a good innkeeper might need to be in the following order:

1. Longevity of my Inn - that the inn is a place where the crew, at least, would choose to stay for years or more, and a place where guests find value in coming back, without nagging incessantly. This is very difficult to even aspire for, if the roof keeps collapsing on it every other weekend.
2. Happiness of the Crew - The biggest (only) asset that the innkeeper has everyday, is the support of his crew, who keep the place tidy and worth visiting over & over.
3. Keeping the guests happy and listening to their expectations.

I hope that the Innkeeper analogy hits close to home in the real-world expectations from upcoming Product Manager and Product Owners. I look forward to your thoughts in the comments...