Should Product Management Exist?

Tech Twitter is up in arms about AirBnB getting rid of their product management role last week.

As a product manager for the last 10+ years who has worked at massive companies with 10,000 employees to a startup with just 9, I have seen many versions of the product role in my career.

I’m giving my hot take on this debate because, like MJ, I take it very personally.

I was laid off earlier this year for the first time in my career, along with my entire product management and product marketing team, because the new leadership team believed product does not need to exist…

Product Management puts food on the table for me and many other people, so this anti-product sentiment is a direct threat to our way of life.

Now, I concede that I have seen the PM role misused, and even downright subtract value from a team.

I’m also against product roles where it seems like the only job is to do a poor translation of business requirements from the C-Suite into JIRA tickets for engineers. That’s “Project Management” which has value in its own right but can be handled by either an Engineering Manager, Project Manager, or startup team whose livelihood is on the line if they don’t ship their product.

I Have People Skills!

So in what capacity does Product Management add value? Although this threat to the very existence of Product Management initially pissed me off, the more I researched about it, I actually agree with Brian Chesky’s move to merge the Product Management and Product Marketing functions. Brian, a designer by trade, is establishing the “Apple Way” of Product Management and choosing to have AirBnB PMs focus more on crafting a vision for bringing a product to life.

At too many companies, Product Managers are focused on Project Management which looks like a less funny version of this scene from “Office Space.”

Great Product Managers spend little to no time on Project Management and instead focus their energy on the following areas:

• Strategy: Researching and writing down a strategy to provide the team with clear reasons why building a product or feature is being prioritized in the first place

• Storytelling: Crafting a narrative about why target customers will buy their product

• Sales: Building a go-to-market strategy (GTM) for how they will acquire or sell to those users to realize their vision

Whether through paid marketing tactics, sales enablement, product-led growth, or a combination of all three. This focus on the go-to-market strategy or “GTM” is nothing new. In fact, it’s steeped in the very DNA of Product Management.

The Origin of Product Management

In 1931 Neil H. McElroy, a Procter & Gamble executive, wrote a memo that is considered to be the first definition of product management. In the memo, McElroy outlined the responsibilities of a product manager, which included understanding the customer, developing the product strategy, and managing the product launch.

Except McElroy didn’t call the role product manager, he called it “Brand Men.”

I don’t know about you, but I rather like the job being associated with the dapper Don Draper.

How the role transformed from “Brand Men” to product managers can also be traced back to McElroy. He advised at Stanford, where he influenced two young entrepreneurs — Bill Hewlett and David Packard. Hewlett-Packard introduced many product management innovations, including dividing the org chart into product groups where each group was responsible for developing, manufacturing, and marketing its products. And boy did it work. Hewlett-Packard’s laser focus on products is attributed to the company’s 20% year-on-year growth they sustained for 50 years from 1943 to 1993.

As for McElroy, not only did he play a critical role in developing Product Management, but he also was a decision-maker shaping some of history’s most important events.

In response to the Soviet Union’s successful launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957, as Secretary of Defense under President Eisenhower, McElroy advocated for starting the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). ARPA went on to invent ARPANET, the precursor to the internet.

So, the “Godfather” of Product Management made creating the Internet possible. Seems pretty darn important to me.

Back to Basics

Product Management needs to go back to its roots and focus on adding value that doesn’t rely on only being better organized than its engineering counterparts. Like everyone else in this tough tech economy, Product Managers must fight for their right to exist on merit. The best way to do that is to get back to the basics. Build a clear strategy, know why your customers will buy your product, and get them to spend more money.

A former colleague of mine was a Product Manager for years, but then pivoted to sales, since the startup he was at needed to start selling more of their existing product to survive. He eventually rose the ranks to become the SVP of Sales. When I asked him how he made such a seemingly drastic career move he said “Are you kidding me? Product Managers know the ins and outs of the product more than anyone else in the company. Who better to sell it.”

My main takeaways from that insight were to always add the most value possible, even if the work involved is outside of your job description, and always be selling.