Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Akeel and in this episode we
cover how to be a great product manager.
Joining me today is Roman Archa from Google and he shares what
makes a great product manager as well as how to help and coach
people to be their best version of themselves.
Enjoy. I was wondering, since you said
you love surfing, I'm going to go work remote in March from Sri
Lanka and one of the things I want to do is surf, right?
Basically, how did you get into surfing?
That's very interesting. I actually tried it out in 2017
while I was on a holiday in probably one of the least
surfing destinations, which was in Greece.
OK. And the thing with Mediterranean
is, it just doesn't have those good ways for surfing.
It's a little slow. And I was on the beach and I've
seen this guy training some kids, so I thought, that's
interesting. I was bored, so I just went
there, tried it out. Of course, when you do it first
time, you're totally stoked because every possible chemical
runs for your body and gives you the drive.
Yeah, but of course you don't really get much out of it.
And somehow with this I paused for a year and then a year
later, two years later, I was in Portugal and where in Portugal?
So with a friend of mine we went to one of the surf camps and
this friend of mine has been living, but then in San Diego,
so lots of surf, doing tons of surfing and we decided to go on
a surf trip, which was a completely different experience
'cause even in summer South of Lisbon you'd get waves that are
at least 2-3 meters tall if there is a proper swell.
It's a different ball game. Well, I shouldn't say I didn't
catch a single wave, right? And I got pounded the whole
week. Yeah, but that pleasure of
waking up in the morning, putting that wetsuit, carrying
that board on a very steep hill, spending the whole day in the
water, and especially that I am absolutely in love with the
beach. I can spend the whole day on the
beach, if you, if you allow me, in good company, in people, with
people that generally come there to have fun was just enticing
and I really started to enjoy it.
And when I moved to the Netherlands, which was probably
about five years ago, I very deliberately chose a place to
live near the beach around Hartman.
Nice. And that sort of pushed me to
get myself my own equipment, my surfboards, you know, the wet
suits. Of course it's not the
Portuguese or northern Spain surfing experience here, but
it's not about that. It's about going consistently
there, grabbing your board. And I do it the whole year
round. Well, I I would do it in January
when the water temperature is like 6° and outside is like 5
and chill wind. And that moment when you just
take that board, you go into the water and often it's just you
here because the the surf community is there.
It's just not very active. And you know, the the place is
not that well meant for surfing here.
And sometimes I'm indeed the only or maybe just one of three
410 people in the water and you sit in there, you wait for the
waves to come and it's a very meditational type of experience.
Yeah. Sounds calming.
Exactly, Exactly. And I also learned that while
you know, even if you're dressed up eventually, it's rather
freezing here. Yeah, absolutely.
But that moment when you get out of the water, the moment when
you change, the moment when you get this hot shower, it's almost
like a cleansing moment for yourself and your body and your
mind. And that's why I continue doing
this. It's people think it's a little
bit of an extreme experience to do it here in the Netherlands,
especially in the winter. Yeah, I think that everyone has
their own moments of pleasure in life.
That's mine. Nice.
I like that a lot. I I work remote sometimes and
I've I've done it two years ago in Barcelona and last year I
went to Portugal for the month in Lagos and then my girlfriend
bought me this surfing lesson together with her for my
birthday. Nice.
And I had, I had done it before, but then I'm talking about more
than 10 years ago, like in high school with the class then.
So this was the first time where we had to wake up super early.
There was this random bus which just picked us up, picked up a
group of people and then we went down this Cliff exactly as you
said. It was a beautiful, beautiful
beach. And that was not the first beach
we went to. We actually drove to multiple
beaches, and the guy kept saying not these waves are not good.
Then we finally went in, and I had underestimated how
physically exhausting I would be at the end of it.
Like, I normally, I don't have breakfast.
I I have lunch like a 12:00-ish, kind of do intermittent fasting,
but it's on and off. So I hadn't eat anything.
I had a ball of water, but again, that's like just water.
It's not gonna give you that much energy basically.
And at the end of it also the teacher made us go in and out
and then go on land and for example keep paddling on the
sand until we really got it down and we would have to jump up
multiple times on the sand, not even on the water.
So then when I actually got into the water at the end of it, I
was just destroyed and I would look over to my partner and
she's also a bit smaller in size.
One wave would just destroy her and he'll be like, oh, she's
washed away. But then finally, again, what
you said when I took kind of that hot shower and then
reflected on that period, that was so much fun.
I really, really enjoyed it and I don't get the opportunity
often. So I'm really looking forward to
doing that again in Sri Lanka. I think it's gonna be a blast.
That is amazing. And you know what's interesting
with surfing? Well, first of all, it's
absolutely interesting that you discover parts of your body and
muscles in your body you never even knew existed just because
they start to ache. Yeah, but I think that, you
know, I I've spoken about this several times how I think that
starting to practice surfing made me a better product manager
and you'd be like, oh, how's that even related?
And I always say that it's very interesting with surfing because
in surfing you get into this water and of course, you could
paddle at every single little bump in the water.
Yeah. But you'll get exhausted and
there will be no result out of it.
So in surfing, timing is very important.
And waiting for the right wave, right as you could think about
waiting for the right trend is what sets you up for an eventual
nice ride. Yeah, timing your paddle, making
sure that you're 2nd and 2nd synchronized with the wave is
what sets you up for the right moment.
So actually, if you look at surfing experience and what does
it take to be a good surfer, which is understanding of the
trend on the horizon, when the swell starts to come,
understanding when to start paddling, understanding how to
get into the wave, do you need to go right, do you need to go
left? The stamina that you have to
develop to make it happen, it's not very different from, you
know, doing complex day-to-day mental work.
Yeah. It's just that this is very much
reflected in the mix of mental and physical world while you're
in the water. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
That's really funny because I don't know if I mentioned it
when we spoke like a few weeks back, but I have a new role now
I I'm going to be product manager for about three to six
months and I've never done that. I've I've done that, let's say
not having the title more so within a team, some of the
responsibilities. But for this assignment in the
coming future, I'm going to have full responsibility over that
part of the role, let's say that's exciting and one of the
things I really wanted to talk about with you is OK, what makes
a really good product owner, at least in your experience?
I love that you say patience is one of it.
Waiting for and kind of reading the flow and then seeing when
the opportunity is there, just like surfing exactly the same.
I recognize that. But what what else do you think
makes for a really good product owner?
Cuz I I really want to learn from you there, right.
Well. It's a question that I get asked
often and I probably have a non standard answer to it.
OK. In my sort of experience so far,
and when it comes to technology, I've been leading or I've been
myself in any type of IT role you could imagine System
administration, project management, engineering,
engineering management, product management.
The thing with product managers, what I learned by being one and
also by having a team to grow is that it's a very particular
profession, OK. And most things in product
management could be learned, but there are some things that are
characteristics that are slightly harder to learn, OK.
And if you ask me what a good product manager or what would
set up someone for success in the product management role,
I've identified for myself a subset of things that are
slightly harder to learn. First, in my opinion, you
really, really should be comfortable in ambiguity, OK?
And the more senior you are, the more ambiguity you have or you
have to deal with. Imagine for a second.
Now you, Patrick, are the product manager in in here and
someone comes to you and says, we actually decided to build a
rocket, OK And sometimes that's the only input you'll get.
Yeah. People who really succeed in the
product management profession are not afraid of that
statement. They're like, that's curious.
A rocket. Yeah.
So that curiosity and comfort of being in a hyper ambiguous
situation at all times yourself with customers understanding
what are you solving for. It's something that some people
have and some people don't and people that don't have it, they
go into that backing off reaction.
That's sort of I'm stuck, Yeah, what do you mean a rocket?
We're not a rocket company. And those that have it, they'll
find this exciting and they'll start to look around.
The other aspect is in product management especially, it's very
important to learn to think through alternatives.
OK? Many people think in very binary
terms, so you have to achieve a goal.
It either is gonna work or not gonna work.
As a product manager, you understand that there is an
entire spectrum of opportunities and choices that you can make,
and everything is a balance of risk, reward, and other
parameters. The more experienced you are as
a product manager, the more of those parameters.
In that balance you can identify and the better alternatives you
can choose. Thinking for alternatives again
puts you in a situation where wherever you're facing with an
unknown, which is what you will have to deal with a lot as a
product manager, you're still able to find a path forward and
move, move the team forward. And then the third thing that I
think that is really, really crucial is being able to
influence people. And I just cannot stress how
important is that is that for a product manager, because in any
organization that I've seen, product management is a side org
which does not really have formal reporting or formal
influence over the organization. You have to work with
engineering. You have to work with
documentation. You have to work with UX.
You have to work with UI marketing writers.
Sometimes there are 10s, hundreds of different functions
that need to be involved to create a complete product
experience. Yeah.
Now people understand what your role is, but that doesn't mean
that they would all go towards the goal that you aspire for.
The capability for you to understand everyone's needs,
everyone's capabilities, plug them properly into the chain of
events and inspire them to go towards the destination that
you're looking to get to is what defines really good product
managers. All the rest of the stuff I
believe is broadly teachable. Of course, you should have some
sense of the domain and things like this, but as long as you're
comfortable in ambiguity, as long as you can think for
alternatives, as long as you can influence people, and then
you're curious enough to invest in all the aspects that make a
product complete, you should be on a good path to product
management. I think that's that's awesome.
What interested me in the role in the 1st place is I like to
understand the why. And also just by virtue of
having multiple conversations on this podcast, I've learned that
curiosity is a big driver of me and it can bring me quite far.
So I feel like I am very curious innately as a person, that's
what I have. And I understand that you say
that not everyone has that and that's a hard thing to teach
because either you're interested and curious or you just maybe
you couldn't care less. Basically.
Because I've also heard that the second part, when you said OK,
think in alternatives, that for me is always tricky because once
I have an idea, I can be anchored and biased towards that
and I like to think in alternatives, but still I I have
a preference in that way. What I tend to do is I tend to
bring in outside perspectives and I try and be objective and
not let my ideas let's say hold me back for better alternatives.
Is that also what you do when you say you think in
alternatives? Do you gather let's say the team
or the business in that way and do like a brainstorm and
facilitate that? Or when the alternatives, when
you said thinking alternatives, does that usually come and stem
from yourself? Generally speaking, you should
always search for other perspectives, either you agree
with them or not. It's also part of product
management. It is quite probable for all of
us and it's in our nature to be anchored and biased towards what
we believe is the right outcome of a certain journey we're
taking. As a product manager, generally
you should have some level of conviction because if you're not
convinced the what you're pushing for is the right
direction, it's going to be very hard to convince.
Also, other people you shouldn't get ever in the trap of falling
into that conviction so deeply where you cannot accept other
perspectives and course correct. Yeah, that's the hard part.
Yeah, yeah. And this is a muscle that you
should develop like inherently, and it is within human nature
for us to fill the voids in ideas, thinking or speech.
You are a very smart person. Whenever I talk to you, I am
sure that even after doing months or years of podcasting,
whatever, I'm putting an idea on the table.
But you think that I'm going to slow or maybe not going in the
right direction. You in your brain are trying to
fill those voids with OK, where is this person going?
Let me tell what's the right thing to do?
This is a big trap, especially in product management.
Right. You have to develop that
capability to listen to the essence and not to the fluff
surrounding that essence in the conversation.
Yeah, understanding why someone says what they say, what is the
approach these people are coming from is exactly that aspect of
empathy that is very important for product management.
And I believe that empathy actually something that you can
learn easier than other things with empathy.
It's very important to get yourself into a routine of
trying to put yourself in the shoes of others.
Yeah, once you are not coming to the conversation from the
perspective. I'm a guest and Patrick is a
host, so we will always be in that situation.
But you could turn the tables around and try to understand
what does Patrick want from this conversation.
Then suddenly you start thinking differently.
You know, when we started, when we had this conversation, we're
scheduling the the whole podcast.
They asked you to give me two free links to other podcasts.
Yeah, that you thought are some of the best that you had here.
And I told you the reason I'm interested in this is because
that is your product here. I want to understand what is the
ideal or the best outcome of your product so that I can put
myself in the shoes of you, the owner of that thing and try to
imagine how can I create an experience between both of us.
That would be fantastic. Yeah, right.
It's just about turning the tables, and that is exactly the
same independently. Either you're talking to the
customer and you're trying to turn the tables, or you're
talking to someone who helps you build the product, like someone
in support, someone in documentation.
In the end, what you care about is creating those complete
experiences for the users, which is very, very hard to do unless
you can ingest various perspectives and understand
where people are coming from. You might disagree with what
people tell you, and that's quite all right.
However, if you see voices coming up and you as a product
manager should enable those voices to come through because
you really want to get those perspectives that you're missing
once they're there, it's a gift. Take it.
Listen in, agree or disagree. But you need to learn to keep
them on the table and understand why they're there in the first.
Place. Yeah.
And not shut them down. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Because that's.
I was wondering. Why you said that?
I thought it was curiosity, but now I understand you were trying
to understand what I'm proud of, kind of in episodes that we've
created. And I was really happy you asked
me that question. You're the only one so far in
140 plus episodes that has asked me give me the episodes you're
most proud of so I can understand what it is you do and
I can be a better kiss. So thank you for that, for sure.
One of the things you you mentioned kind of stuck with me
when it comes to, let's say, fighting for your ideas,
fighting for a vision that you believe is right.
I feel like I do that either it doesn't really matter what role
I have. It's also in personal life, I've
been called a bit idealistic even sometimes, but I like
fighting for what I believe is right.
And I'm wondering if you've ever had a situation where you
thought, OK, this is the vision basically, and it turned out
there was a better vision and someone actually persuaded you
or you got that outside perspective and it changed you.
I'm wondering kind of how it changed too in the vision that
you had. That's an interesting question.
I've never really gave it much of A deep thought.
I think in the end, the way I learned to approach anything in
life, including product development, is for the lens of
change, and whatever I'm given an opportunity or within the
scope, I identify a domain in the direction of which we go.
I do spend definitely a significant amount of time
carving a grand enough vision that could give myself, but also
people around me enough scope to thrive so very much by design.
And sometimes this is actually interesting, 'cause I sometimes
I have conversations with colleagues which are coming and
saying, hey, this is too broad, this is too big of a vision.
My perspective on this is always that I really want that big
vision because I want more people to find themselves within
that vision. Yeah, and carve propose
different ways, unthought of ways for us to achieve those
outcomes. So the mindset I'm usually
taking here is to allow people to come up with thoughts and
steps towards the vision that are beyond what I can think of.
I've never felt really challenged to change the
direction. Yeah.
Yes, sometimes I might not be very happy with how things are
done. Pace, structure, the way we
package a product, more of those operational aspects, however,
within the ground vision, within what we're giving the users in
the end, the more we evolve that vision, the more we understand
where we're going, the more proud I am.
And if there is anyone in my larger team who says you know
what, that vision that we're having here is small enough.
I'm happy to make it larger. If people are saying that seems
to be a great idea. But through research, through
customer conversations, it seems that this is not the right time,
not the right place for it. I'm very happy always to go back
to the drawing table and rethink about it.
So I think this is another important aspect of product
management. You really shouldn't be dogmatic
about things and you've probably heard if you abstract it for
yourself for a second. Think about any small startup,
anyone who's building a product from scratch till the moment
they make it, till the moment they find the market fit.
They could pivot many, many, many times.
And in essence, this is it, right?
You're coming with a perspective on life, a perspective on user
needs, a perspective on outcomes that the world expects.
However, you always come from a very limited set of data points.
The moment you get deeper into this, the moment you enlarge
your data points, the moment you meet smarter people, or people
who have domain expertise, or people that just think
differently from you, they might change your mind in terms of
where you're going. Exactly.
And if this is very early in the product or a company, then you
absolutely should take it. I think it's a little bit more
complicated once you have an established product, once you
have an established business model, especially because
business models are very hard to change.
This is where massive change of vision, massive pivoting is
complicated. Like you couldn't take CB and I
don't know, make it overnight. A company that does lab grown
meat for example. That wouldn't make much sense,
right? Exactly, Yeah.
It's based on the investment, both time wise, process wise and
the efforts of people. And the more I think you're
invested in this vision, the harder it becomes then to change
as well. So the earlier you can get,
let's say, a greater set of data points and really test the
assumptions, I think it's better than to pivot.
Yeah. And I love what you said, that
the vision is broad enough for people to see themselves in it
and to be like, OK, this part I understand.
This part I maybe don't understand, but the overall
vision is sound and they can still give feedback, they can
still criticize and that's how it gets sharper.
But when it comes to, let's say the essence of a product vision
is that usually, does that come from you as the product manager
or do you gather the business there And do you have kind of a
a facilitating workshopping where you create a shared vision
or how does a product vision, let's say, originate in the
first place? So generally speaking, I think
you always try to understand what are you solving for and
depending on where you are and the scope you're looking after,
how that vision comes together might be very different.
OK. If you are part of a very, very
large company like Google and you work within a specific
product domain there, there is certainly already something in
place around that general vision for the product that needs to
happen. Yeah.
If say in my case, I work with Google Kubernetes Engine and we
do have a vision that is focused on empowering innovation for our
users on top of the products that we're building, I
definitely would not go and within my part of the sub
product try to create a vision for us to be the best runners in
the world, right. So there are certain constraints
in which we're set. Within those constraints, the
exercise of setting a vision is really to try to realize what is
going to change for the end user.
And I actually teach quite a bit, including on my YouTube
channel that whole concept structure of vision, strategy
and values. And the way I usually explain
vision to people is that it has to have one important component,
which means that the vision is there because it solves a
problem that has not been yet solved, someone's problem that
exists. And you use the vision to
communicate to everyone else what's going to change when
you're done. OK, so a vision shouldn't really
be very complicated, very fluffy.
People think sometimes of a vision as some sort of a
aspirational direction that, you know, people cannot relate to.
Actually, if you look at visions of large companies or brands
that you love like Visa or like IKEA, you'll see that when you
read their vision statements, you really can identify with
them. You really, I think Visa has
something along the lines of be the best way to pay and be paid
or something like this. OK.
Yeah. I don't recall exactly the
formulation, but you'll see that most brands that you love, they
have very simple visions and you can identify with them.
And the reason why is because that vision is very crisp in
terms of what is it that's going to change when you, Patrick, are
going to use their products and when they're at the end of their
Rd. Yeah, same as with the rest of
the things, right, like strategy.
Strategy is not a bunch of complex things.
Strategy is nothing else than hey, you wanna change something
in the world, That's your vision.
Say with this podcast you wanna make sure that every voice in in
the Netherlands is heard. Maybe that's your vision, right?
I think that's a nice vision to have with the podcast in the
Netherlands. Now you have the reality and the
reality is, hey, I have 18 million people here.
What does every voice is heard mean?
Do I literally wanna have 18 million people in my podcast?
Maybe you do. Then the strategy is just a set
of educated guesses you're making on how to take you from
the baseline towards that point of change that you call vision.
Yeah, those are steps. And you can say, hey, I'll have
a podcast with 1,000,000 people at the time.
Is it feasible? Not feasible.
But that's your strategy. You're trying to experiment
this. It's a path forward and that's
the whole structure. In fact, if you look at vision
statements, if you look at the baselines, if you look at the
strategy paths, at some point you really start to build the
muscle how to use them and they are literally mostly tools for
growth and tools for scaling decision making.
That's why I don't put that much emphasis on who made the vision,
who wrote the vision or where it came from.
As far as I'm concerned, can as well come from Bard or Chat, GPD
or wherever you like it. OK?
What is essential for me is that for myself, for the people that
I work with, the vision is clear enough where everyone
understands what is going to change for the and or what would
change for the end user and resolve whatever we want to
achieve for the planet. And as long as it's there, it
gives us a great tool to constantly reassess our baseline
and make sure we have a sound strategy that takes us there.
Yeah, that's about it. That's about it.
I've never had it explained so simply that it doesn't have to
be complex. It doesn't have to have any
fluff or let's say marketing buzzwords.
It can be as clear as crisp as you want it to be as long as
it's that step on the horizon that we can use to kind of keep
moving forward and anchor us towards where we want to go.
I think that's really cool when it comes to kind of also your
your personal career journey, I saw and you also mentioned that
you came from a lot of different fields, right?
You mentioned engineering, engineering, management, product
management. Also, let's say with the people
aspect, where you were not yourself involved anymore as a
product manager, but you're managing other people, right?
Educating them, Probably that role of empathy there was still
very much prevalent there. But why have you switched back,
let's say, to an individual contributor in a product manager
again? Because some people say
management is upwards and individual contributor is kind
of downwards. Yeah, well, I'm back to people
management and product management.
Yeah, back again, I'm. Back again on people management.
It's a very good question, Patrick.
I've been going back and forth between people management of
teams of various sizes and the individual contribution for
quite a bit of time and I find it always very refreshing.
I think that if you spend too much time in doing people
management without doing the OR being at the end of the IC sort
of chain environment, sometimes you lose grasp about how those
organizational complexities feel like to the end user.
On the other hand side, if you were an IC, it's very liberating
because you're literally almost always just responsible for
yourself. Even as a product manager you
can go and you know, grow other people.
To your point, you could influence people, but in the
end, at the end of the day, your responsibility is only you.
Wherever you move and become a people manager, you wake up with
that question in mind of either a my team is set up for success.
And that to me is first and foremost where my investments
go. The moment I take over people, I
need to make sure that they can find themselves on the team and
they understand why they're there, how they're going to grow
out of this and someone cares about it, right?
So it really changes the perspective.
You wake up in the morning not with the perspective of how am I
going to fix problem A or B. You're waking up in the morning
with a perspective of AM. I set up organizationally well
for success where through the actions I make, I force multiply
the outcomes because there are so many smart brains now coming
together in a cohesive way to create those complete
experiences that I'm looking for.
And I think that I very much enjoy both sides of that, both
being in charge of myself alone. On the other hand side, for
many, many years, and I think I've done people management for
more than a decade now, I've always found joy in structurally
coaching people to outcomes, and I never take people management
for granted. I try to make sure that everyone
who's on my team has a very clear plan, very clear coaching
plan, very clear goals, but that I also know what's important for
them so that I can give them options and alternatives to
achieve their outcomes. And actually you'll be very
surprised and how interesting it is when you do people management
in a structured way and you really invest in coaching people
very often. On one occasion, 2 occasions you
know three questions you Patrick, you can define for
yourself. At some point if I push you hard
enough what is your goal in life?
And you might have multiple they could be professional domain,
personal domain. Most people in 1-2 or three
iterations can get to the bottom of what's what their goal is in
life. Most people after some
deliberation can figure out what is their reality that surrounds
them. Very few people can actually
identify all the options of the on the table that they have to
change their reality and achieve their goals.
And if you have a manager who understands what your goals are,
understands how you perceive your reality, they are there to
constantly listen in and find the right opportunities to
channel to you, for you to achieve your goals and change
your reality. Of course, that comes also with
your personal willingness to invest time, money, whatever it
happens. So the goals, the reality, the
will is always on you. Options are something that you
work with your manager, or that manager connects you to other
people to help you unlock. And the moment you unlock those
options to people, you see them going on a skyrocket trajectory
instantly. Yeah, yeah, I can see, I can see
the joy in that. And I'm also, I mean dabbling my
foot in kind of a more so leadership position also
formerly now with Inkcevia. And I'm, I'm enjoying it, but
I'm also struggling there because as you say, the
structured way of coaching can be really helpful.
But I don't want to be too dogmatic.
So I don't really enforce any structured way that much on,
let's say, the people I'm coaching or the people I'm
responsible for, the people I talk to in general.
I'm wondering if you're the same, how, how flexible are you
or how dogmatic are you when it comes to let's say, coaching
people? Because I've also heard people
say I'm I'm not great with goals, so I don't really do
goals. And then other people say, well,
goals are really important because otherwise you achieve
nothing. I I'm always out there with the
offer of a structure of a framework and frankly speaking
at least the one that I figured out that works for me to bring
the people along has been very successful and generally quite
accepted. I'm completely non dogmatic with
what goals people set for themselves.
I'm very dogmatic for people to get to the bottom of their
goals. Coming with a goal of changing
the world is great, but frankly speaking, you could just make
yourself a coffee in the morning and feel like the world has
changed. Yeah, this is not really
something to clearly set to look for.
It's like with the vision, right?
You could come up with the vision, say make the entire
world run or you could come with a vision of empowering every
athlete and both are fine, sort of.
But the second one is a little bit more clear on where do you
wanna go. Yes.
What kind of a you're Nike, right?
And I think that what I've seen is that even that thing, like
with the goals, you have to work with people, everyone in the end
has some goal in the morning, right?
Like when they wake up, there are things that make them happy,
some things that don't make them happy.
Very few people I've seen who say, you know what, I'm
completely uninterested in anything in life.
I'm not sure if you've met people like this.
I don't think that this is the case.
Yes. They might not have career
related goals, they might not have business related goals,
they might have personal goals. Yeah, that's fine as well,
right? They might have educational
goals. You should be completely non
dogmatic about what is it that people want to achieve.
On the other hand side, the structure of bringing them to
where they wanna be, it has to be there because.
You need to understand that motion of how do you help people
grow. And some people will accept it,
some people will not accept it. I think 1 interesting aspect
that I've seen is that sometimes people know what their goals
are, but they're not willing to do anything about it.
And that last aspect, which is the will, is what often gets
mistaken for the lack of goals. OK?
And with will, you cannot force anyone to have a will.
They have to invest something, time, money, attention.
And they might not be there today to do it.
Yeah, and that is OK. But that is for own personal
growth. Now if you use that structured
approach as a people manager, you could also make sure that
you understand how to feed that person within the working
environment in which they are to maximize their outcomes on one
hand side. But also make sure that this
team member is in the right place at the right time.
Because you absolutely do not wanna be in a situation where
someone's goal in life today is to make sure that they have time
to learn flying or they just need more time for themselves in
the afternoons. Because maybe they are in the
burnout for very long years. And you're saying I'll put this
person is very smart, you know, I'll put them to work 14 hours a
day. You just don't want to do that.
So understanding in a structured way where people are so that you
through those opportunities can place them for success, where
they feel they grow, also you maximize the outcome for the
team is very important. I think that if you're not doing
this in a structured way, the outcomes might still be there,
it's just you will never be able to assess are we moving in the
right direction or not right. So it's you shouldn't be
dogmatic about what people have top of mind for themselves, but
I think you should be somehow structured around how do you
approach. This.
Yeah, I like that a lot. The goals don't necessarily
matter, but the structure and the way to get there that can
have some structure and process in there.
One of the things you really, I mean, made me reflect about
what's kind of the lack of will of some people where they
understand what they're really good at, where they want to
move, what they want to be better at.
But sometimes then their lack of effort or the lack of will, as
you put it, holds them back. And that is something from my
perspective. I've had ups and downs.
I'm not going to say I'm perfect, but I I like moving
towards something for myself and also seeing other people's move
towards something. It gives me energy.
It inspires me also to do more and to do better.
But for me to inspire someone that doesn't want to do that,
that's something I'm, I'm first of all personally challenged
with because I'm like how or why or when.
And I have to accept that. I also have to realize that's
OK, exactly as you put it. But then to move them, would you
still put them in opportunities that can maybe inspire them or
maybe activate that will? When it comes to what they want,
do you give those options then as manager or do you keep in
mind that that might be a great option for those people?
Is that how you activate them? Absolutely.
Yeah, I do think that first of all, life is a roller coaster.
A structured approach is important because you can and
should always visit that situation.
Yeah. The fact that someone was not
having will to put invest or whatever for millions of reasons
that can be on the table yesterday doesn't mean that they
are not ready for this today. And in the end, within the
environment in which we are 'cause you might be coaching
people in two different environments.
One is in a very private environment, in which case
depending on the relationship you have with these people, you
might or might not want to activate them.
And you know, I do quite a bit of side type of help coaching
with people who just come and say, hey, I wanna change my
career, I wanna do this. And sometimes we spend time with
them and I definitely very quickly assess if those people
have will, If they don't have will, will come to me when you
are ready, Yeah. Then we have a conversation or
come to me as often as you want when you feel like, OK, there is
a spark somewhere happening. That's one aspect of it.
Then there is the formal people management.
And formal people management on the job almost requires you to
activate people. Why?
Because first of all, you need to understand their own goals.
But you also wanna see how can you work together where their
goals are also aligned with the company or the team goals.
Yeah, and where those options are.
Because when you align their own goals with the career goals, you
bring them together, you actually are maximizing the
effect. People get what they wanna get,
but then you also get that additional traction on the team,
that team spirit, that growth of that person, that capability to
promote them that you're really looking for as a manager and you
know, it's very interesting in life.
I also figured out that generally speaking, the reason
why it's so worth investing in people activation, coaching,
growth is because the more motivated, senior, educated,
satisfied people you have on your team, the less work you
have to do So in a very selfish way.
Once you realize this, you understand that you have nothing
to win from not growing these people, but a ton to lose.
Yeah. So you better just invest so
that you can go on a holiday any time for a month, shut down your
phone and still know when you're coming back.
Things will just be fine. Yeah, have the confidence in
your team and the lack of worries to do so because you've
invested in them exactly and they've grown to a point where
you can. I love that.
When you mentioned you moved back and forth, let's say from
this more so managerial role from the coaching perspective,
let's say formally cuz I know you do outside as well to more
of the back to the individual contributor.
Was that also when you was that kind of when you realized, OK
I'm out of touch with what my people are facing challenge wise
or yeah, I think mainly challenge wise, maybe priority
wise or what the business needs are when you felt out of touch
with that or also when this kind of irk to have ownership of
something just you and not necessarily the team kind of
irked you? So often this has been related
to changes in career for me. OK, changes in location.
I've been moving quite a bit. I'm on my 6th country right now
and sometimes and I was never really dogmatic about keeping
the management line. Yeah, I was always more
interested in the job I'll be doing rather than where am I
formerly in the organizational structure.
So often those changes have been triggered by a change of profile
of the work that I was doing. And first of all I find this
extremely exciting that I've been part of various roles in
technology because it exposed me to what people do in general.
I know what a project manager does, cuz I've been one.
I know what this is admin does because I've been one.
I know what a manager does because I've been one.
What a manager or manager does, because I've been one.
Product manager because I've been one.
You very quickly empathize with those people.
Later on you understand various aspects of the business
consulting. You've done this, you've been
there. And then of course, when you
switch back to the ICE, I think that it's easier to understand
when organizations become bloated or dysfunctional.
Because when you're a people manager, there are so many
things that are moving. You know, you have to do this
reporting, this, this and this. On one hand side.
As a manager, you understand why you wanna put the structure, why
you wanna put all of that. Well, you know, not necessarily
complexity, but sometimes it grows into complexity.
When you change back to the IC, you actually sense those
structures even more acutely because you see them happening
all the time. And I think that switching the
roles allows you to really understand what is good enough
in an organization. And if you were just moving
through the ladders, managing people, sometimes maybe that's
not with everyone. You get out of touch on what is
it that the time of the end person of the IC has to really
be spend on. If you've been there, you know
that if you've been hired as a product manager you really wanna
do product management. You don't wanna get another 55
things on top of your head to do because the organizational
structure has been bloated to the point where you get millions
of inputs of what's important. And when you do those switches
that becomes very apparent where that balance, where this finance
balance is. I can see that yeah, I I wasn't
doing it consciously. Again, curiosity has always been
a big driver of me. Years ago I always thought, OK,
this product management role, having the responsibilities,
figuring out what stakeholders want, what they really need,
even also from an end user perspective.
That always sounded really interesting to me.
So I'm happy that I I get opportunities to make those
switches and exactly what you said.
To then gain a perspective to learn from, to also empathize
with the other party. If I switch back to a different
role in that way, and to gain a better understanding of how
everyone is functioning. If I think they function or if I
think they do what they need to, or if their their plate is just
bloated with stuff based on the organization, I think that's
very valuable. It's never been a goal for me to
learn because of that. Again, it's just curiosity, but
I like that. That is a great byproduct and
that would probably make me a better professional in the end.
Yeah, I want to thank you, Roman.
This has been a blast of a conversation, I think.
Yeah, really a great listen back to when it comes to how to be a
great product lead, product manager and even manager, coach
and just person. Thank you for coming on.
Thank you, Patrick. It was a pleasure to be here and
I'm looking forward to keep listening to.
Thank you so much. I'm going to put all Roman
socials in a description below. Check them out, let him know you
came from our show. And with that being said, thank
you for listening. We'll see you on the next one.