Leadership in the trenches

A few years ago when we were in the midst of product development on the first gen $49 Echo Dot, we hit a complicated design snag. We realized soon enough that it was a fairly complex problem with impact to BOM, production schedules and product experience. The Operations leader on the program pulled together a team of XFN leaders and ICs and we spent hours together, every single day for a couple of weeks until we landed at a good solution. In that time, that leader spent just as much time on the whiteboard as anyone else. He didn't just ask for status and updates, but spent time in the trenches with us. I use this as an example for “the leader in the trenches” because it is hugely important for shipping complex products successfully. This is true for any size organization especially in ones where the layers of management end up creating a big gap between the team building the product and the leadership accountable for it.?

Build Trust, Develop Empathy

Spending time in the trenches allows leaders of all levels to understand the problems teams are facing. This is also true for XFN who are not often the ones writing code or designing/building hardware. As a Product Management leader, I feel this every day when my understanding of a particular problem is often directly proportional to the time I spent diving deep into it which invariably happens when I am in the trenches with the team building it. In addition to helping understand every aspect of the problem, it also helps in building trust and empathy which are critical for any successful outcome.

Micromanaging and Status Updates

Spending time in the trenches is often mistaken for micromanaging which is not the case, atleast with leaders who understand that when they are in the trenches, their position/level of authority is less important and how they stand shoulder to shoulder with team members is far more valuable. Time in the trenches is not the same as? status updates. Status updates invariably reinforce the leader/worker archetype.?

Not necessary to grow, but necessary for growth

This is the most important part of spending time in the trenches. It is not required for one to grow in levels and stature in an organization. Most large organizations have leaders who succeed by just communicating upwards. It is though required for one to grow personally as someone the team trusts deeply in a time of crisis as someone who can not only lead and communicate effectively but also understand, empathize and possibly even roll up their sleeves to help solve the problem.?

As Product Managers, this particular ability to spend time in the trenches is incredibly important. When teams are small - a designer, a PMM, a PM, a few devs and QA, behavior almost defaults to everyone spending time deep in the weeds. But as PMs grow to being leads and managers, some of this muscle memory is lost and leaders become status providers and upward communicators. While some of this is required, it often comes at the cost of dissociating from the sausage making which is immensely valuable not just to the leader but also the team.?

When COVID first surfaced in Jan 2020, months before it became a thing in the US, we started huddling together as a team to scope out the impact to our development and production of Quest 2 which was due to launch later in the year. Over the course of the next few weeks, many of RL's senior leaders spent hours huddled together with the working core team every single day including weekends to identify our best options even as the situation was rapidly evolving. In that room of many directors and VPs, titles were less important than the effort each person put into understanding every aspect of the problem and exploring the solution space together as a working team. As a contributor, a stakeholder and a product leader, it gave me immense confidence in this group that wanted to solve the problem as a team. And this is ultimately what a leader in the trenches offers. They give teams the belief that we are looking to succeed together, not as individuals but as one team.?And in the process, they grow to become better leaders.