Where Do We Find Joy?

I’ve coached scores of product leaders over the last few decades, and mentored hundreds of product managers… initial conversations are typically around how to get things done; how to understand and work complex organizations; ways to structure teams and boost collaboration; processes for improving the odds of building winning products. Technique and tools.

We usually then slide into the fundamental challenges of product work: responsibility without authority; burnout and relentless imposter syndrome; inability to explain to non-practitioners what we do and how we add value.

But lurking underneath these process discussions and organizational challenges are more personal questions: “Why is product management/product leadership so exhausting, such an emotional grind? Should I be doing something else (that’s easier)?” More broadly, “Where do I find fulfillment and appreciation and joy in this peculiar gig?”

A hard question, and one with many possible answers. (Or sometimes, no answer at all.) After almost 40 years in product roles, I’m still struggling with my own partial responses. So stepping away from the day-to-day transactional work to unpack this…

Product Is Hard!

Of course, every job is hard in its own way. Dunning Kruger suggests that the less we know about someone else’s job, the easier we think it is. So no intended slams toward other roles, but here are a few things that make Product challenging:

Action at a distance. Others (developers, designers, test engineers, technical writers, trainers) create most of our actual product artifacts. We’re often the organizers, motivators, argument settlers, spokespeople, or technical frontmen. So it’s hard to point to any one atomic thing and say “I did that myself!”
Team ethos. If things are going well, then “we” words are most appropriate, as in “our team did a great job; we all worked on that; let’s celebrate as a group.” Wins are shared. When problems emerge, “I own this until we understand it better” and “let me dig into this” rather than throwing teammates under the tram. Product folks are called by name when the s**t is flying.
Deeply cross-functional. Poor selling dooms our products, as does weak marketing. Likewise quality issues and late-to-market and misconfigured development team and sloppy positioning and missing SKUs and understaffed support. So we do endless coordinating / wrangling / updating / reminding / checking in with almost every department. More often than we’d like, less often than seems necessary. Outsiders don’t see the effort when everything goes well.
Almost never the final decision-maker. Especially in B2B/enterprise settings, escalations and executive fiat are real. Major deals override roadmaps. The Board gets to demand cool AI features even where that makes no sense. We spend a lot of energy figuring out how to “sell” the right answers internally.
We’re a tiny fraction of the total company, typically 2-3% of total employees. And in spite of our fascination with product processes, almost no one else is as interested in what we do as we are. (I’ve recently heard this called prodsplaining, after mansplaining.) Watch eyelids droop when you mention “product operating models.”

Yet we persist in doing product work. There must be a reason.

My Best Joy Model for Product is Parenting

In one of my earliest posts (2003’s Parenting and the Art of Product Management), I compared this to raising children.

As product managers (parents), we find fulfillment through our products’ successes and how they help users. Praise from customers/users isn’t for us personally, but makes still our day.
[Why is there a young woman playing violin at the top of this post? She’s your product, playing to a rapt audience of users, buyers, executives, and investors. You are standing at the very back of the concert hall, in the dark, where no one sees you or knows your name. But your heart is thumping! You’ve worked for years to get to this moment.]
We protect our products like we protect our children. Most 1.0 releases are pretty terrible, but we have long-term plans for them to grow up big and strong and earn tremendous revenue – v2.1 and v5.15a and v7 will be great. We play the long game, with sharp elbows for anyone trying to borrow our makers or our funding.
At non-tech social gatherings, we blather on about our products and our users – not our organizational challenges. It’s about customer value and NPS scores and market recognition and pride in the thing we’re bringing to life.

Visible success accrues to our products, then, not to us as product managers. Internal wins are immediately shared with the extended team. So product management joy comes to us indirectly. And sometimes it’s only our little circle that recognizes it. But that’s enough. (If you’re looking for personal glory and higher pay, consider moving into Sales.)

What About Product Leaders?

As VPs or CPOs or Directors of Product, with product managers working for us, we’re yet another step removed. If one of my portfolio products is on stage – garnering applause and great reviews and powering our IPO – then one of my staff is (metaphorically) at the back of the auditorium. I get to read about it in the Arts pages (sales reports) and conspire to get them a bit of internal recognition.

These days, my own fulfillment comes from coaching/mentoring product leaders so they can pull their own folks up the ladder. That puts me three steps away from the actual product work of nurturing products. But helping CPOs hire and grow budding talent brings its own kind of fulfillment. And hearing from someone about a long-ago bit of (apparently sage) advice is pure joy.

[Experiment: think of someone who’s been important to your success or career development, but that you haven’t talked with recently. Send them a thank-you note with specifics about how they helped.]

Sound Byte

Any job worth doing needs to deliver its own kind of fulfillment. Gratification. Joy. Take a moment to think about what lifts your heart, and how to fit a little more of that into your week.