As Published on LinkedIn on 7/10/2020
Like every other kid who grew up in 90's, I absolutely loved Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. On the south-side of my bedroom wall was the 1987 Michael Jordan free throw line dunk poster, a poster of the Bulls 1997 starting line-up, and even the four aces from a Bulls deck of cards (foreshadowing on the nose). I grew up in Montclair, NJ. My dad, a native Chicagoan, would buy season tickets to the New Jersey Nets just so we could see MJ and the Bulls play a couple of times each year. So when ESPN released their documentary series, The Last Dance, a chronicle of Jordan and the Bulls dynasty, I ate it up and couldn't get enough. While I expected to be dazzled by Jordan highlights, and I was, I did not expect MJ to teach me about product management. But, greatness knows no bounds and the philosophy MJ applied to basketball can be used by product managers to achieve stronger results.
Never Take a Game Off
"Michael Jordan is the only player that could ever turn it on and off. And he never turned it off" - Roy Williams, University of North Carolina Men's Basketball Assistant Coach 1978 - 1988, Head Coach 2003 - present, The Last Dance, Episode 1
As a product manager at Amazon, we write a lot of documents. The recommendations in our documents significantly impact the customer experience and our businesses. It behooves us as business leaders to "never turn it off" when analyzing the business problem, writing the document, and defending our arguments to colleagues and leaders.
Since watching The Last Dance, I've challenged myself to embed this philosophy into my work DNA. One of the more effective ways I've been able to do this is by ensuring that any time I recommend a product, feature or solution, I also unpack the other options considered. I then include a detailed analysis explaining why I rejected the other options. This earns trust among leadership because it allows me to demonstrate deep critical thinking, which leads to better decision making. While it sounds simple, it's not easy in practice.
Applying this skill requires you to go deep on the problem statement and objectively argue for the other options. Doing so will empower you to make the right recommendations. Raw talent is a good start, but it doesn't write a great document. Question your assumptions and show your work. Look at every argument from all perspectives as objectively as you can. Apply System 2 thinking to every document you write. This will result in faster decisions, better outcomes, streamlined meetings, and an occasional accolade from your VP. In the world of an Amazon Product Manager, this is akin to a playoff victory against Patrick Ewing and the New York Knicks.
Pass the Ball to Create Motion
"The triangle offense is set so there's a key pass that creates motion and then there are 33 different types of options that come out of that single pass. Players can do spontaneous, creative things - using their strengths." - Phil Jackson, Chicago Bulls Head Coach, 1989 - 1998, The Last Dance, Episode 4
MJ was not initially a fan of the Triangle Offense. From 1987 to 1990 he'd won the NBA scoring title and the Triangle Offense would take the ball out of his hands. However, while he was winning those early scoring titles, the Bulls weren't winning championships. So he adjusted his strategy, embraced this offensive philosophy, and put the team first to achieve a larger goal. The rest is history.
Teamwork makes the dream work, but it's easy to forget that when the role of a product manager is defined as an individual contributor (IC). As an IC, the best way to quantify your success is based on your direct output. Recognition of your contributions outside of your scope can be overlooked. That's okay. By setting your ego aside and putting the energy into supporting your peers' work, you are creating opportunities for "spontaneous, creative things." Multiple and diverse perspectives help uncover open questions and usually lead to better solutions. At a minimum, genuinely helping your colleagues empowers them to be more successful because they know they can trust you to support them and help fill in the gaps. Their success equates to success for the business. For example, one of my colleagues recently authored a Working Backwards document. One of the topics that needed to be answered in their document had downstream businesses implications that fell within my scope. This required me to spin off a spontaneous and dedicated analysis which I used to inform my answer. This analysis ultimately helped us align as an organization and streamlined what had previously been a hotly debated topic.
Be present
"Most people struggle to be present. People go and sit in ashrams for 20 years in India trying to be present. They do yoga, meditate, trying to get here now... Michael's a mystic. He was never anywhere else." - Mark Vancil, author of Rare Air, The Last Dance, Episode 10
The 2020 Covid-19 quarantine has made "work from home" the new normal and it has made being present even more important. Meetings have transformed into conference calls. In March, most meeting participants would join the conference call with video enabled (making for a very Brady meeting). However, now that it's July, the novelty of video conferencing has worn off and the percentage of participants joining a conference call via video has dwindled. I have no qualm with whether one joins a call with video on or off. I often join meetings without video because of a webcam driver issue on my work laptop which inevitably results in the blue screen of death (BSOD) - I'm sure my wife has now heard me tell my colleagues about my BSOD video conferencing issue more a dozen times. That's beside the point. When you attend virtual meetings all day and don't have your camera enabled to keep you accountable, disengaging becomes easier. I find this can happen when a discussion point in a meeting doesn't apply to my work, so instead of actively engaging I catch-up on emails. Some may applaud this as multi-tasking, but multi-tasking isn't real, it's task switching. By task switching, you are not present and you can't add value. This creates a problem for product managers, whose job it is to understand the implications of the key decisions being made in meetings and provide feedback. If a meeting is not valuable for you, don't attend it. But whenever you do attend a meeting, close your email, close your browser, and be an active participant. Always be present.
A word of caution: Being present is not the same as only thinking about the present and being reactive in your work. You can be present while thinking about the future or past, like writing a three-year plan or conducting a retrospective on what went wrong with a feature release. The key is to be present in everything you do. You make choices everyday in your work and owe it to yourself, your peers, and your business to focus all of your energy on the task at hand.
Conclusion
I learned at a young age that it was impossible for me to "Be like Mike" when it came to basketball, but it's also not easy to "Be like Mike" as a product manager. Never taking a game off, passing the ball to create motion, and being present are simple concepts, but instituting them takes discipline and a continued commitment to be better today than you were yesterday. I am personally guilty of not subscribing to these philosophies as frequently as I'd like. That's okay. I'm not the Michael Jordan of product management - not yet at least. But, I'm going to keep pushing myself to implement these principles in my work so that they become second nature. Good isn't enough for me. Greatness is all there is.
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