Seventeen years ago, I made a pop-culture-packed presentation called The Successful Product Manager. I recently found it again and asked a simple question: How much does current me agree with 2009 me? Some ideas hold up, some need asterisks, and a couple get taken out to the woodshed.
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I was watching a VHS recording of Mystery Science Theater 3000 from 1999 (complete with the original commercials!) when an ad asked a dramatic and completely insane question: “What do Cub Cadet lawn tractors dream about?” It got me thinking about how we sell AI.
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Peter Cullen helped transform Optimus Prime into more than just a hero. He helped forge him into a role model. One of mine, actually.
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In product management, we spend a lot of time figuring out how to work better. We optimize processes, eliminate extraneous meetings, and experiment with new ways to shorten and improve learning cycles. That’s all good. But as AI and new tools help things flow faster, I don’t think product leaders should try to make everything flow faster.
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Writing the novel turned out to be a bit harder than having an idea for the novel. And in some ways, writing and self-publishing Sam Vale was a surprisingly good product management exercise. You have a target audience, a problem you’re trying to solve, an enormous backlog of things you could add or change… and eventually you have to stop iterating and ship the thing.
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What’s your biggest weakness? Pretty standard job interview question. But Product Managers have a way of making even the simplest questions a little more complicated…
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