Do the Little Work
If you’ve worked with or for me (or read my previous blog post), you may have heard me talk about the concept of “little work”. I see "little work" as the routine tasks that, though not flashy, are crucial to long-term repeated success as a Product Manager. When done regularly, they lay the foundation for "Big Work," like launching impactful products.
Reading a recent blog post by the esteemed Marty Cagan titled “Product Management Theater” got me thinking about little work. In his post, Cagan criticizes the "big hat, no cattle" posturing that occurs when individuals with minimal product management skills take on roles demanding extensive expertise. Lacking experience or necessary guidance, PMs in these scenarios are metaphorically stranded on one side of a chasm trying to figure out how to reach the impactful product launch on the other side. Some PMs, unsure of how to take the first step, become what Melissa Perri in Escaping the Build Trap calls “waiters," only delivering what leadership or stakeholders request, relying on the hope that the disparate components will eventually build a bridge, which they rarely do. Others, believing the only way to start is to take a giant leap into the void, fully commit to their first promising idea; when the leap is misdirected, this results in products that rely heavily on hype and cherry-picked metrics to claim success. Without exceptional luck, neither approach will lead to repeatedly building truly impactful products in the long run.
One of Cagan’s key points in his post is the growing lack of job security for these “big hat, no cattle” PMs unless they find ways to uplevel their skills. He recommends doing a frank self-assessment of one’s Product Management skillset, ideally aided by a competent Product Manager or leader who “knows what good looks like”, and finding ways to work on the gaps. While I largely agree with Cagan here, I think there is also a critical mentality shift that needs to happen for many PMs. I have worked with and led many early- and mid-career PMs who are bursting at the seams with the right skills but nonetheless struggle mightily with the ambiguity of how to cross the chasm.
We are too prone to believing the myth that great products are the result of ideas springing like Athena out of Zeus’s forehead fully formed from the minds of product visionaries. The truth is much less glamorous but much more accessible. To every Product Manager, regardless of experience, that doubts that they know how to build an impactful product, I say: yes, you do. Because there is no Big Work. Big Work is just little work all the way down, and little work mostly just requires curiosity and diligence. Once you embrace the fact that every world-changing insight is the result of countless micro-learnings, doing Big Work by investing in the little work becomes not only doable but compelling.
At this point you’re surely asking, “so what exactly is little work?” It is, ironically, a set of requirements that typically appear in some form or another in almost every Product Manager job description, but that tend to be deprioritized or become unbalanced when the “real” demands of the job set in; for example:
Observing what your customers do, say and think with respect to your product and within your industry. The closer you can get to interacting with real customers, the better.
Diving deep into your product’s key performance metrics to understand how customers are or are not using your product. I am inclined to believe that the depth of insights gained by building (or deconstructing and re-building) the reporting oneself is worth the up-front effort, even if the reporting already exists.
Identifying the inconsistencies within or between the quantitative and qualitative findings, and testing hypotheses that might yield explanatory information.
Researching analogous challenges and solutions in other industries and settings, for example within academic literature.
Learning about and playing with new technological developments, such as generative AI.
Deeply understanding your company’s P&L, core reporting and how it makes and spends money.
Spending intentional time with stakeholders to empathize with them, understand their problems, discuss your findings and solicit their reactions and ideas.
While at many companies there may not be a product leader capable of providing strong guidance across all aspects of little work, every Product Manager should be able to find at least one person at every company, in many cases outside of the Technology org, who can help provide guidance in a specific area. PMs must be curious and diligent enough to seek out and learn from those individuals.
Are any of these activities individually as exciting as pitching a grand product vision? Perhaps not; and yet I promise you that if you invest no less than an hour a week in each of the thematic activities listed above that by the end of a quarter you will have achieved exactly the same outcome with a higher probability of success. The key is being patient enough to ground yourself before you attempt to fly, and bold enough to persevere when the path foreward isn’t obvious. In my experience, having a rock solid footing in the quantitative and qualitative aspects of your customer, company, industry and technological context is the only way to consistently identify the most impactful problem to be solved and the most promising solutions to it. Packaging these insights into a compelling vision is a skill that distinguishes many leaders, but for those starting or in the mid-stage of their careers, focusing on foundational skills is vital. Presentation and motivational abilities can develop over time, but a solid foundation is harder to build retrospectively. This concept is beautifully encapsulated in the Japanese philosophy of “shuhari”, which will almost certainly be the topic of a future blog post.
For any Product Manager facing the challenge of building an impactful product and unsure of where to start, to paraphrase Michael Jordan:
“Starts off with little work, ends in champagne. Let’s get to little work.”
