Product people's analogy

Diversity of knowledge, career paths and background ,I see it as a plus advantage not a progress slower or obstacle , as it enables the person viewing the same thing with different angles ,wearing many hats for the same exact one.?

This makes the results and the outcomes innovative , resilient, patient enough to try many and many experiments of trials and errors. These intrinsic characteristics became crucial in the industry 4.0 which the only static thing on it, is its dynamic!

So, here I want to share with you an analogy I noticed during my product management career ,as there are two common patterns for the product people and we go through it all the time.

The story begins, when one person in a conversation takes the client role ,may be the actual customer, UX designer, data analyst or domain expert or any other stakeholders, while the other one takes the vendor role, may be product manager, product owner or engineer.

It’s the client’s job to know what he wants, and to explain the details to the vendor. That’s what we call "requirements." It’s the vendor’s job to listen, understand, and then think through for delivering what the client asked for.

When the solution is delivered, and the person in the client role receives what he asked for, he then gets an opportunity to use it and realize it’s not what he needs. He doesn’t get the outcome he imagined he would.

Hence The real tragedy here is that the person in the client role understands his problem better than he’s able to predict what will solve it, And in that case conversations about problems and solutions are replaced by discussions and agreements about requirements. little wins here and this is the first pattern which is the waiter one.

One other kind of relationship many of us have that does break this pattern which is the one we have with our doctor. Try showing up at your doctor’s office and giving him your "requirements." Tell him the prescriptions you’d like written and the operations you’d like scheduled. If he’s nice, he’ll smile and say, "That’s interesting; tell me where it hurts.'' This is the second pattern which is the doctor one.

In my head, I picture a continuum where on one side is the word waiter, and on the other is the word doctor. We are all trying to make our working relationships much more like a good doctor-patient relationship, and much less like a waiter-diner’s.

But in the end these patterns may depend on many other variables like the situation, company culture, client role knowledge, time available and our abilities itself ,so I think it's a good topic for academic research!

For me both are healthy to have and the best is to balance depending on our current variables. So who's agree and who's wearing another hat:)