(2018-09-01) Cutler Less Herding More Doing

John Cutler: Less Herding. More Doing. Here’s a totally biased product manager tip: Be a team member. Be a participant. Less herding. More doing.

The more you get into the business of (herding)...the more you’ll start wearing the wrong set of hats. Your team will start relying on you for something that they can, in most cases, do for themselves.

it is better to master being a context builder and problem definer

There’s a kind of pervasive fetishism about product management — casting it as either mini-CEO-ism (CEO of the Product), or as humble servant leader to a fault (basically a humble mini-CEO). What both trigger, in many cases, is a sort of cult-of-personality around product management. And I’ve seen this go to the head of many a product manager (often without them noticing). It distracts people from rolling up their sleeves and being a good teammate.