I met “the” Marty Cagan

And here’s what he said!

Got a chance to meet one and only Marty Cagan, author of #Inspired and more importantly someone who has inspired me all along.

The session felt so info-important, getting 1–1 crude insights from a Product industry leader was a dream come true.

Q. How to find if a company is going good in terms of their product ?

Fundamentally it boils down to is the company a “Feature Team” or a real “Product Team”
Do they just have the stakeholders running the company and the so called PM’s are shipping the favourite features of the stakeholders?

Or is the Product really led by Product teams

While joining any company make sure that you join as a Product Manager , and not as a Project Manager roles disguised in the name of Product manager.

Q. What truly defines a good product culture inside a company ?

The culture will show up.

Culture breaks into 2 parts fundamentally, Product culture and product culture.

There’s 2 leadership styles that control the managemental culture,
Top Down and Bottom Up, the similar culture talked in the book “No Rules Rule” by Netflix Cofounder.

• Are the tech decisions taken by engineers ?
• Are the product teams talking to customers ?
• Are the designers enabling the designs, UX and UI ?

Answer these and you’ll find if the culture is good or bad.
In one line “Are the employees empowered or are they instructed ?”

Q. How do we ensure that we hire the best quality people ? How do you measure the best-ness of an employee ?

1. Do they have the core skills ?
Will you hire an engineer who doesnt know much about computer science?

2. Making sure that the person is not toxic. Making sure of psychological saftey for your culture.

So find the people with these two things and then empower them, coach them, to build great teams.

Q. What are the characteristics that set apart a good PM to a great PM ?

The best teams are not the one with rockstar people, real great teams at scale comprise of normal ordinary people given the right set of tools.

Q. What was your inspiration of writing the book “Inspired” ? What was your thought process ?

I realised that not many people outside silicon valley don’t know much about Product management. Also most of the books I found on Product Management were non-sense, except a few ofcourse.

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Q. How do you develop Creativity, Product Intuition?

Ideas are all over the place, we are never short of idea. So it’s a myth that it’s a product manager’s job is to think about ideas and features.

It’s not really about ideas.

There is a need of craftsmenship that is needed to be done to the idea to turn it into a decent product. And that craftsmanship is what product people must bring in. The discovery is there.

A product managers job is not to bring ideas rather it is to turn an idea into a stellar product.

Do watch “THE LOST INTERVIEW” ( Steve Jobs )Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRZAJY23xio
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Core advice for budding Product managers.

1. Know what you cannot know.

2. Products are useless without engineers, so know that the best source of ideas are the engineers and build a strong working relationship with them. Don’t try to be their boss, be their partner and learn from them.

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