How to Kill a Product Management Team’s Morale
As a Product Manager, you can have:
- An effective process
- Market feedback
- A viable financial model
- A well written MRD
But none of these things matter if your Executive team subverts or ignores the process or market data that the Product Management team brings to bear.
As an example, I was once in a product planning and strategy meeting and had an exchange like this:
Paul: “…and the product will have 10 ports and a web-based UI…”
Exec: “It should have 20 ports.”
Paul: “The data we collected shows that 10 ports is the sweet-spot.”
Exec: “I think it needs 20. That’s what we’re going to build.”
Executives - nothing kills a PM’s will to work faster than feeling that the market data they’ve collected is being ignored. Roasting your PM in public is also a great way to encourage other departments to subvert the process. If you know you want a product to look or work a certain way, talk to your PM team so that they can test your assumptions in the market.
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