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Product Management

Three product leaders to learn from at #mtpcon inside Pendomonium

With a career founded in writing, I pivoted to Product, enjoying the challenges offered by managing diverse products while bringing clarity of communication to my work. I&#39;m passionate about seeing how fast the space is evolving, and always interested to be part of the conversation, whether as a contributor, or writer.

Jon Horvath

<p>In this <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/mtpcon/digital/" target="”_blank”" rel="”noopener” noopener noreferrer">#mtpcon Digital 2020 keynote</a>, <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/matt-lemay-a-conversation-about-clarity/" target="”_blank”" rel="”noopener” noopener noreferrer">Matt LeMay</a>, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1492033510/" target="”_blank”" rel="”noopener” noopener noreferrer">Agile for Everybody</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1491982276" target="”_blank”" rel="”noopener” noopener noreferrer">Product Management in Practice</a> discusses the importance of recognising and resolving a fundamental tension product people face when seeking individual recognition.</p>
<p>Watch the video to see his talk in full. Or read on for an overview of his key points:</p>
<ul>
<li>Recognising the tension of attaining individual vs team recognition</li>
<li>Adopting incompleteness as a trigger for action</li>
<li>Taking the One Page, One Hour pledge</li>
</ul>
<h3>The Existentials of Success</h3>
<p>Matt begins by examining the anxieties he experienced early in his product career. These lead him to ask himself existential questions like, “does anyone recognise or appreciate the work that I do?” and “am I doing everything completely wrong?”.</p>
<p>It wasn’t until Matt attended <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/producttank/" target="”_blank”" rel="”noopener” noopener noreferrer">ProductTank meetups</a> that he realised how universal his insecurities were. It’s not surprising: “Our roles are highly variable, inconsistent, and ambiguous&#8221;, he explains, &#8220;they’re different from team to team, from organisation to organisation or even from day to day,&#8221; &#8211; just ask five product managers what they do.</p>
<p>What is consistent, whether you’re an assistant product manager or a CPO, is that “your individual success is realised through your teams’ work”. And while your own work is directly beneficial to the team, you’re rarely able to demonstrate it when justifying your career existence.</p>
<p>That’s where the tension arises.</p>
<h3>The Tension of Acknowledgement</h3>
<p>Earning recognition is hard. In pre-Covid times, product managers would perhaps be acknowledged for their ambient activities: head-scratching, dashboard scanning, or scribbling on whiteboards. Now working remotely, we need to advocate for ourselves more than ever.</p>
<p>Product people deliver value by employing tactical skills to ensure developers understand our strategic direction, so that their code successfully realises designs and requirements. Unfortunately, these high value actions will rarely be recognised.</p>
<p>Says Matt: “For better or worse, documents and deliverables are the best available paths to individual recognition.” But it can be the detriment of our mission, delivering little value to the business or its customers, and can take us away from our ability to work together towards delivering value.</p>
<p>So how can we resolve this tension?</p>
<h3>Incomplete by Design</h3>
<p>Referencing the 2008 paper <a href="https://www.academia.edu/9292846/Incomplete_by_Design_and_Designing_for_Incompleteness" target="”_blank”" rel="”noopener” noopener noreferrer">Incomplete by Design and Designing for Incompleteness</a>, Matt shares a quote: “Rather than pose a threat, incompleteness acts as a trigger for action.”</p>
<p>This “kind of mind-blowing” fundamental changed Matt’s way of approaching docs and deliverables. Rather than crafting something unquestionable, unobjectionable, full of fixed assumptions, Matt shows how doing the opposite &#8211; intentionally creating something incomplete &#8211; encourages participation, and shifts the focus from ownership to cooperation.</p>
<p>While incompleteness may sound scary, because you may have to disrupt your own workplace, Matt shows that it isn’t by sharing the analogy of a game called Mad Libs. It’s a game where players prompt one another to provide words to fill a blank-spaced story, creating together. What’s clear is how structural incompleteness becomes collaborative and generative, allowing for unexpected innovations.</p>
<p>How do we constrain our own incompleteness?</p>
<h3>One Page, One Hour</h3>
<p>With his business partner Tricia Wong, Matt developed the <a href="https://www.onepageonehour.com/" target="”_blank”" rel="”noopener” noopener noreferrer">One Page, One Hour</a> pledge; agreeing to a physical and temporal constraint, while focusing on collaboration and creative synthesising, as opposed to self-serving reward seeking.</p>
<p>“That’s the beauty of creating something incomplete”, Matt says. It’s not intended to be final but it’s a way to drive organisational transformation, making people contribute in a passionate and engaged way; “my documents become our documents”.</p>
<p>As these ideas proliferate and expectations shift, we eventually get to a point where team success and individual recognition are moving in the same direction. Now our value is directly dependent on contributing to the success of our teams &#8211; insecurity is disrupted.</p>
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<p><a href="//wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Matt-LeMay-Sketchnote-from-mtpdon-digital.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-20867" src="//wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Matt-LeMay-Sketchnote-from-mtpdon-digital.png" alt="Matt LeMay Sketchnote from mtpdon digital" width="2002" height="2812" srcset="/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Matt-LeMay-Sketchnote-from-mtpdon-digital.png 2002w, /wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Matt-LeMay-Sketchnote-from-mtpdon-digital-214x300.png 214w, /wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Matt-LeMay-Sketchnote-from-mtpdon-digital-768x1079.png 768w, /wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Matt-LeMay-Sketchnote-from-mtpdon-digital-729x1024.png 729w" sizes="(max-width: 2002px) 100vw, 2002px" /></a></p>
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Product Management Conference

Product teams in flux – Pendomonium+#mtpcon roadshow: Berlin

AI in practice at Berlin’s leading companies – Pendomonium+#mtpcon roadshow: Berlin

AI in practice at Amsterdam’s leading companies – Pendomonium+#mtpcon roadshow: Amsterdam

Product teams in flux – Pendomonium+#mtpcon roadshow: London

AI in practice at London’s leading companies – Pendomonium+#mtpcon roadshow: London

What’s next for product management in 2024? Nichole Mace (SVP Product and User Experience, Pendo)

Navigating your product career – Ken Chin (CPO, Spark Networks)

Perspectives from an unconventional CPO – Yuelin Li (CPO, Onfido)

The future of product management – Trisha Price (CPO, Pendo)

The future of product management in 2024 and beyond (Brian Walsh, SVP Product, Pendo)

Incomplete by Design by Matt LeMay

Jon Horvath