Why Most Product Teams FAIL to Grow: Jayson Robinson on High-Agency PMs & Real Impact

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Convergence Podcast. I'm your host Ashok Sivanand. Ashok Sivanand I don't care if the trains run on time, but I'd rather have the trains late every day if I saw that like when they launch they're going super fast. People are often in an efficiency mindset when they actually need to be in an effectiveness mindset. On this show we'll deconstruct the best practices, principles and the underlying philosophies behind the most engaged product teams who ship the most successful products.

[00:00:36] This is what teams are made of. If you're a CEO or founder that's very product minded and looking to leverage product as a way to grow your business, or you're a technology executive trying to figure out whether your product team is actually driving growth for you, or just keeping the trains running, you're probably going to find this episode both very cathartic as well as very actionable.

[00:01:00] Welcome to another episode of Convergence.fm folks. Our guest today is Jason Robinson. Jason has led growth product at scale. He's led teams of over 25 PMs, as well as teams of engineers and designers at companies like TopTal and Bear's Dev.

[00:01:20] He's built direct to consumer brands, launched enterprise products at companies like Marks & Spencer in the UK, and also teaches advanced product thinking at Mind the Product. Jason's also a founder himself and has spent the last few years advising other B2B SaaS companies on how to build product orgs that are commercially accountable.

[00:01:44] In this conversation, we get into the increasingly critical and often misunderstood role of the growth product manager. Jason shares why efficiency without impact is a trap and how the traditional translator PM is quickly becoming irrelevant in modern product organizations. If your team is great at rituals, but can't point to measurable results, this episode will probably hit close to home.

[00:02:13] We also get to talk about why growth PMs aren't just a flavor of product management and maybe a different species entirely. If no one on your team owns adoption, retention or revenue, then growth isn't really anyone's job and that's a structural problem that you're facing. And for founder-led teams, we dig into a familiar challenge that you might be experiencing.

[00:02:37] How to know when it's time to truly hand over the reins and what to do when your product hire isn't stepping up to fill the gaps you're still quietly closing yourself. If you're thinking seriously about the structure of your product organization, how to align your teams around outcomes that matter, or whether your current product folks are wired for what comes next, you'll want to listen to this one closely.

[00:03:05] Here's my conversation with Jason Robinson. Subscribe to the podcast to get future episodes as soon as they're published. If you find this helpful, give the podcast a five-star rating on your podcast app or hit that like button on YouTube. Jason Robinson I'm so excited that you're able to make some time here. I think this topic of growth PM is one that hasn't gotten enough of an audience.

[00:03:32] We're still hearing about kind of growth PM being lumped into product management. So super excited to get a little bit deeper into it. Before that though, maybe let's start with some definitions for folks who are maybe newer to the term growth product manager. And let's get your definition of how you'd characterize the role. So I think growth PM is like the name, the clue is obviously in the name.

[00:03:56] It's your job is about growing the product rather than working on anything which might be related to like the task success of the product or the user experience of the product, which obviously are important things. But the growth aspect will be more around like how do we increase adoption and retention and revenue and things like that. And that's pretty much the only difference.

[00:04:21] And that's why like I think there's a hell of a lot of crossover between both. And especially for early companies, like it's kind of the same role anyway. And as the product or the company matures, those roles can be split out, although I'm not necessarily sure that they always should be split out. So yeah, I think there's a big overlap, obviously. But the big thing for me is like the focus on outcomes related to business metrics.

[00:04:51] And in an ideal world, all product managers have an orientation towards the business metric that whatever part of the product or the entire product that they're building is in service of. And I'm curious, the growth strategy then and product strategy are very intertwined. And are they always the same when it comes to growth PMs? Are they different? How do you see those two things being related in this growth PM role?

[00:05:19] I think they are one in the same, because unless you're working for something like a nonprofit, all businesses exist for profit. And, you know, the higher up you go in businesses to execs like they, at least in my experience, they're not talking about like the user experience of the product.

[00:05:41] They're talking about how to increase revenue or enter new markets like with the product because they want to see growth from the product and growth from the business. Now, that may trickle down into strategy further down, which is around like increasing like better onboarding experience or a better task success like from the product.

[00:06:05] But I think generally speaking, they always are or at least should be most of the time the same thing.

[00:06:11] Yeah. And I'd say I would tend to agree with that. And that's furthermore, even for not for profits, we had a guest on recently that talks about sort of impact as being the reason not for profits exists or mission and something like Earthshot, he mentioned, and the number of sort of scalable climate solutions that that can be measured is like something that they're looking to grow, no doubt, and try to do more with less and so forth. Okay, can you expand on that a bit more?

[00:06:41] Yeah, I think when you mentioned not for profit and more recently, I've been doing a little bit more not for profit work and helping not for profits with both their business strategy, their growth strategy, and then in some cases, their product strategy. I think something that I've seen come up a lot is that there's that sort of stepping away from a product perspective of thinking like growth isn't important.

[00:07:07] But when you get underneath the surface of why that not for profit exists, even if it's not for profit, there is some kind of mission that they have. Like Earthshot is a climate based not for profit actually started by Prince William, I believe. And they are looking to find the most number of scalable climate solutions.

[00:07:29] And so even if it's not profit, for any product manager working at Earthshot or advising folks that Earthshot is providing grants to and stuff, understanding that kind of core, what are we looking to move up to the right, even if it's not profit, it's scalable climate solutions, is sort of their growth strategy, as much as it's not necessarily tied to money.

[00:07:53] So I think what I was trying to say is that not for profits are not for profits are not for profits are not for profits that don't have a clear vision in terms of what number we're trying to move up or down. Yeah, I agree. And that's kind of what I'm in there.

[00:08:21] I think on the flip side, as product folks, it's part of our role to push up and manage upwards to the business leaders, whoever kind of have hired us to help with the product side, and really get them to articulate their company strategy, the company's business strategy, the growth strategy, so that we can dovetail the product in alignment with that.

[00:08:48] And I'm curious if that's, you know, a conflict of that or an alignment of that has showed up in your experience. It has. It has. And actually thinking about it, this was probably my first real experience of growth product management before I had the title of growth product manager. And this was when I was working for a very large multinational retailer from the UK. I won't mention the name.

[00:09:15] And I was a product manager, like responsible for bringing their new online food delivery service to them. So they have their own like grocery division. And they wanted to be able to sell like meals and groceries to people like by delivery. So very much like Uber Eats, but for kind of groceries.

[00:09:39] So it's pretty early on, we had a great team like a UX designer and UI designer engineers, etc. The UI, sorry, the UX designer was working on like a different part of the product. So I said, okay, well, like, why don't I take the onboarding side of things and I'll figure out like the flow for that.

[00:09:59] And part of the way I designed it was setting up the onboarding in such a way that we would capture people's postcodes and their email addresses before we kind of told them whether or not like the service was available in their area. And then eventually to use that as a way to determine which new areas we launch in, because we only launched initially in like a couple of stores.

[00:10:25] So our reach was like really low, but the whole point was like that kind of growth thinking of like how we grow this product both like digitally and then also operationally, like in different stores was I was kind of building that into the initial experience. And then when I kind of showed this to like my bosses and directors at the time, I basically got told to take it out.

[00:10:48] And I was like, why? And the UX designer would like agreed with me like this is like smart, it's like a good way of doing it. And they were like, we don't need to do that. And also what they said, like it's always stuck with me. They like to paraphrase, they said marketing will handle this. And I was like, okay, why are marketing not in the room with us now?

[00:11:16] And not only like marketing will handle this, but I did ask this question. I was like, okay, so when are they getting involved? Like we were like a couple of weeks in at this point. And they said, oh, like when it's launched or like near launch, they will become involved. And I was like, how are you not thinking about this from like the get go? Eventually we got to a week before launch and you know, people started panicking about like, oh, how are we actually going to get users for this?

[00:11:45] By the way, people to use it. And I mean, I don't know how much like detail kind of you want to go in, but like they said, oh, we'll just email our existing customer card, like loyalty members. So I said, okay, well, like, can we geocode them to the like areas that we're operating in? No, like that's not reliable data. So then they ended up emailing the entire database of people saying like we're live in these areas.

[00:12:12] And I was like, that's a terrible customer experience. And that's how, but that's how they launched it. And, you know, they didn't really have like a growth strategy in mind for this product when they launched it. And eventually they mothballed it like a year or two later, which is a shame because it was a great idea. And like it was a great product. But yeah, like, I think that's the sort of thing that happens when I think it was just a big disconnect between that old way of thinking about marketing.

[00:12:42] Like, again, it's like a hundred year old company. It's a pretty, pretty obvious what company was versus like a new modern way of thinking about growth with really, especially relating to like product life growth. Yeah. I mean, this is something I've experienced working with very established enterprises and, you know, for, for the right reasons in a different context, the, the product and technology folks were separated from marketing and growth folks.

[00:13:11] And I think, you know, if, if you're selling, uh, groceries and you have been for over a hundred years, if you're selling loans, if you're selling cars, um, a lot of the assumptions around the solution have been sort of flushed out with time. And then it's put into a very efficient, uh, sort of linear, almost like a manufacturing line where marketing gets involved.

[00:13:38] They understand a few key things and within very little bit of variance or margin or ever, they're able to go out there and get this next 2025 version of whatever it is out there. Um, and I think doing revolutionary different products is very different where startups are constrained by, by cash and budget, which forces all those folks marketing is in the room.

[00:14:04] Even if they have an org chart that looks similar to the big retailer, um, you're overhearing each other. You're swiveling your chair and asking that question. Uh, they are curious about it. Um, wanting to sort of provide their insights and maybe even help with discovery. And then that, that sort of growth PM and, and growth and PM all sort of meld into one song sheet at least.

[00:14:28] And then, so I think it's what's been optimized for efficiency that is holding folks back when they're trying to do new things where it's just not efficient at all. But effectiveness is the goal when you're getting started. And then once you figure the thing out, then efficiency and, and I think that's a really fascinating story. And one that unfortunately I've heard about more times than I'd like to have.

[00:14:54] Speaking of efficiency, another thing that I'm seeing is in this PM role, folks have sort of, especially the bigger companies have really optimized for this product manager role. And unfortunately I think it's taken accountability away from other folks in that product managers have kind of become this translator between business and tech. And they've really kind of gone deep and to some extent, I feel like I've lost the plot in terms of why that role exists.

[00:15:22] And maybe the role is not needed anymore either because engineers are a little bit more business savvy and no kind of more questions to ask about how growth is going to happen. And then more importantly, I think the business folks have gotten a lot tech savvy and the conversation between engineering and business is, is a little bit more short circuited than before. Yeah. Um, and so I think growth is an important part.

[00:15:45] Um, and so if you're a product manager and you're not either swimming towards growth and selling more or swimming towards architecture and building better, um, then the folks in the middle are maybe going to left, get left behind. And I'm curious as someone who's transitioned into growth a number of years ago, uh, you've probably gotten to see validation points or invalidation points on this kind of thesis that I just stated out loud. Yeah.

[00:16:10] I mean, I've written a little bit about this actually on, on LinkedIn and, um, and I'm doing a project at the moment, which is quite a fascinating project with, uh, one client, which is kind of touching on this. And it's, it's mostly about like, how does AI change the nature of product teams? Um, for example, like the question, do we still need the product trio or, or does that actually need to be?

[00:16:38] To change that whole operating model of building software. And to kick it off, what I did was I said to them, like, this is what I'm going to do. Um, write an essay. I'm going to write an essay on like why we've got to this point and why we might be moving away from it now.

[00:16:58] And in that essay, I basically said, look, the reason we got to this point is because up until pretty recently, you needed different skills or different people with different skills to be able to bring a software product to life. So at a minimum, you needed someone to program it. Generally speaking, you need someone to design what it's going to look like and how it's going to work. And then at some point we added the product manager as the business person to figure out the right priorities.

[00:17:25] Um, make sure that the things that we're spending time on is actually like the right things according to business objectives. One of the reasons I think that we created that role is because 20 years ago, a 45, 50 year old tech executive, or let's say not even a tech executive, an executive in a big company who was now building software.

[00:17:50] They didn't understand all of the intricacies that go into design and engineering. And so they hired someone to make sure that the things that they were doing were the right things and could act in that translator role. They've all retired now. And so everyone who works like in any company kind of touches technology pretty much at some point. And everyone is a lot more technologically fluent.

[00:18:17] And, you know, let's be honest, most of the products that we use and understand are all kind of very similar, like create update type applications. And so people can understand what's possible with, you know, APIs and things like that pretty simply. So I think definitely like there's multiple flavors of product managers, right? But definitely that flavor of the translator role.

[00:18:47] I think that's well, maybe it's already gone away, but it's definitely going away. And I think a lot of the other flavors are going away as well. What are some of the other ones that come to mind? Well, let's see. So you've got the MBA style PM. Amazon hire a lot of MBA style PMs. You've got like what I refer to as a user experience style PM people who like kind of sketching out workflows and things like that. Research based PMs, technical based PMs.

[00:19:16] And they all for sure. Had a place in the last couple of decades. But as I say, again, with AI, and this is like what this project is, it's which ones of those are still adding like substantial value to the process of having them in a team of designers and engineers.

[00:19:39] And I think, oh, there's another one I just thought of is like the team based PM, like people who like very much into culture and like team alignment and things like that. And obviously, like everyone does a bit of all of this, like when you're a PM, generally speaking. But the ones that are like, let's say, very skewed towards the team based thing, the translator flavor, the user experience flavor, even potentially the research flavor.

[00:20:08] Like they're all now they're having their value extracted from AI. Fostering an engaged product organization and aligning them with the principles around lean, human centered design, and agile will more than likely lead to successful business outcomes for your organization. But getting started or getting unblocked can be hard.

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[00:20:58] During this session, the integral team will facilitate a problem solving exercise that gives you clarity and confidence to solve a product design or engineering problem. That's integral.io slash convergence. Now back to the show. I think there's always this debate about specialists versus generalists. And I'm going to guess that we're about the same age.

[00:21:27] When I was kind of getting out of high school, going towards college, there was a huge emphasis on becoming a specialist in things. And I think that's totally right. Given the paradigm where you're sort of wanting to be really efficient and then you get real specialists integrated well. And then when you're in a paradigm where things are changing a lot, like in this AI world,

[00:21:53] someone who's able to do all those skills that you just described together with the superpowers of AI, where if they didn't go to MBA school, but they kind of understand some of the foundations of business and then they use their AI tool of choice to kind of fill in the nitty gritty and specialist details. But they're able to hold together. How will I fit this into the user experience? How will I fit this into getting the team really energized and the team culture really flowing?

[00:22:23] How will we get this architected really well? Then that's kind of a super PM that's not unheard of today, given the tools of AI, compared to the ones that I think pick any of those flags and choose to kind of focus on those that I think I'd be a little bit more concerned for. For anyone who's who's doing that personally, what do you think? I agree and disagree with that. I'm of the same opinion that you need to specialize. And I've always thought that myself.

[00:22:54] I now think that that has become even more extreme than it used to be when I was kind of like early on in my career. And that is because AI and automation is still extracting value from, let's say, the middle, like the fat middle. And if you want to specialize, you've got to get to the top 1% or top 0.1%. And that's like in some ways your safety from AI.

[00:23:22] So now I think it's better to be a generalist unless you really do have the determination and patience to specialize because AI serves as like your co-pilot in all the things that you're not a specialist in. Like you can be a generalist and a very good generalist in lots of different disciplines by just employing lots of good AI tools.

[00:23:47] And I think going back to what we said before about sort of articulating the vision and strategy, I think doing that well for leaders serves both the generalists and the specialists on the team. And the generalists, as you can imagine, are sort of able to firefight their way through and pretend to be different roles to make progress. And the specialists on the other hand that might be struggling with this can kind of specialize in whatever the North Star is.

[00:24:15] And it's hard for them to do without the context provided by leadership in terms of like, hey, you know, I hate to use a war analogy, but what are the battles along the way we need to win in order to win the war? And breaking that down and understanding how this all fits in together.

[00:24:32] Then if I'm someone who's wired more to be a specialist, then I know that instead of specializing in any of those forms of product management, I can specialize in helping this company get to where they want to get as sort of the specialty that my brain wiring maybe needs more than a generalist. And, you know, I guess the underlying assumption is my belief is that we're wired to be able to be good at one or the other. And there's not as much choice in that.

[00:24:59] Like, I know that for me to go beyond so many layers deep in something that I'm not obsessed about, I just get really tired and I end up drinking more coffee and, you know, finding other ways to hold my attention compared to something that changes just a little bit. And I'm able to connect dots that maybe weren't previously connected. Yeah. And I'm exactly the same.

[00:25:21] Like, I almost intentionally avoid trying to be a specialist and that's because I like, I enjoy being a special, sorry, a generalist. Like, I like solving disparate problems. And like, I hate the term, like my superpower, but like, I have been told this, like, one of my superpowers is like being able to connect dots across like very disparate things to come up with something, you know, that's uniquely insightful or strategic or something like that.

[00:25:50] So in the vein of this PM role changing, I think if there was a, say, a founder or CEO out there that was sort of straddling that strategy role as well as the product role.

[00:26:06] And they have a head of product maybe that's pretty good at keeping the trains running on time, deliveries happening smooth, the engineers seem to have clarity, but they're having to get involved with closing a lot of the, what they feel like is obvious gaps in the product. My senses tell me that's the kind of PM that, you know, needs to kind of figure out how to step up and take care of some of those things so that that founder can kind of do more strategy.

[00:26:33] And I'm curious, what kind of advice you might have for that CEO? I think it really depends on the CEO's preference and their, you know, what they think product management is. And because there's still a lot of people that think product management is kind of project management.

[00:26:52] And if he hired him with the kind of brief, like, hey, you know, the main thing is keeping the trains running on time, then you can't complain that like, well, the trains are running on time, but he's also not fixing some of the gaps in the product. So you got to start there with that type of question. Like, what do you want out of them? Like, and what did you tell them you wanted out of them? For me, product management is a lot bigger than that. It's a lot more strategic than that. It's a lot more business outcome driven than that.

[00:27:17] So certainly if that was my head of product and it was my business, I'd be like, this is not working out. I would expect, like, you know, so you said it's a founder with a head of product. So I'm guessing, you know, we're talking a business that's like less than 50 people, less than 100 people, something like that.

[00:27:38] And if I had that business and my head of product was not banging down my door, like every week with like all these problems that he's finding, asking for more budget or like, you know, telling me there's growth opportunities like in adjacent markets, things like that. I'd be kind of like wondering what he was doing.

[00:27:57] And then, you know, flip over to if you had to, if you were the CEO and coaching this, coaching this head of product, what's the kind of reframing that you might be able to provide them in terms of, hey, it's great that the trains are running on time and delivery is in a good cadence. Now I need you to step up to do ABC. So what might that conversation be like?

[00:28:23] I've had to have this conversation as a director of product with someone like who I managed as a growth PM, which was the same situation, like very organized, very structured. The trains ran on time, as it were. Sometimes they're a little bit late, but at least I was always aware that they were going to be late. And I've had to have that conversation. It's like, I don't care if the trains run on time and nothing like the needle is not moved.

[00:28:52] Like I would rather care that, sorry, I'd rather have the trains late every day if I saw that, like when they launch, they're going super fast. Or sorry, when they left the station. And I think it's this old kind of, not paradox, that's the wrong word, like tension between people are often in an efficiency mindset when they actually need to be in an effectiveness mindset. Yeah.

[00:29:16] I think that is, that's something that, especially if you've come from kind of a big environment and not everyone's gotten to see the kind of scaling phase. I've gotten to see that just sheer by dumb luck and some of the companies I've worked at. And you realize that there's kind of a few phases, right? There's like, initially you're almost not effective or efficient where you're in discovery mode and learning is the measure of effectiveness.

[00:29:41] And then once you've kind of got some nuggets from that, you're promoting that into, hey, let's, this is effective now. And let's start to bring efficiency into it until eventually sort of really extracting products that part phases of products that I would really struggle to work on. I've struggled to work on in the past where everything's more or less established. And it's a matter of not, not having to, you know, ruffle any feathers or screw it up.

[00:30:11] And this, again, my belief is that there's a brain wiring in different folks are wired for the different things. And at the same time, there are folks who are adaptable where maybe that coaching will stick and sometimes it doesn't. So I don't know, I've probably managed half a dozen, maybe a few more, like growth product managers and product managers, et cetera, over the last few years.

[00:30:34] And of the ones that weren't very strong on that, despite coaching, I've never seen them be able to step up because I do think it is like how people are just wired in a very core way. Like I don't think coaching really solves it. And it just comes down to like those traits around like high agency, how driven someone is and things like that. I think that makes a ton of sense.

[00:30:56] And speaking of, what do you think some of the wiring is of someone, you know, is a PM today and thinking about, hey, I don't know if I want to become more technical or if I want to go into growth. What are some characteristics you think that you'd look for or you'd help them look for within themselves that says, hey, yeah, I think this growth stuff is definitely worth exploring for you. I wouldn't have you shy away from it.

[00:31:20] Yeah, I think having worked in the growth side of things now for like, what is it, seven, eight years, I'd probably say don't work in growth because it's stressful. So people who can hide all the stress. Yeah, I think so. I was thinking about this earlier because I thought you might ask this question. In my experience, like good product managers, like really good product managers, they are high agency people and they're quite driven like personally.

[00:31:48] And they bring that to their job. I think with growth, it's the same, just more extreme. Like you can't get away from being very driven and very high agency because it is a, you know, you're measured basically on your adoption, your revenue, your retention, churn and things like that.

[00:32:13] And if you don't figure out ways of making those numbers go the way that the company wants it to in the level of magnitude that the company wants it to go in, then like you haven't done your job very well. And maybe like, you know, obviously sometimes you can't, you're not set up for success. But I think some PMs like, and there's no, there's no like shade on them as it were.

[00:32:35] Like not everyone is the same, but a lot of product managers, especially the ones that I've taught when I've done training sessions, like they're just more chill. You know, they want to do some user interviews and like design workflows and like have like workshops with engineers and things like that. And like, but if nothing really happens according to the success of their product, like they're like, that's okay. Like they're just more chill and nothing wrong with that.

[00:33:00] Like for some reason I was built this way where like that would annoy me immensely. And so I guess that's why I'm probably more suited for a growth product management role. Yeah, I think, you know, there's certainly some elements I think from your history where you've founded a company yourselves and had to figure out all the different nitty gritty to get that off going off the ground.

[00:33:22] You have worked closely with founders and sort of gotten to understand, again, the realities of what it takes that have been pretty good proving grounds to even help yourself realize that the aspects of the role that are hard are maybe not that hard for you in theory or practice. Because you've gotten to see it before and you've gotten to see that you can, you can slap it all together and get it done.

[00:33:47] And this reminds me of a story of someone that came to me quite a few years ago. A friend of a friend was getting into the PM role and she was moving out of technology and she really wasn't sure if this is what she wanted to do. I think there was some aspect of, there's a romanticizing of this product role that kind of came about maybe in like the 2010s.

[00:34:14] What's his name? The VC guy who wrote Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager. Yeah, Ben Horowitz. Yeah, maybe we should name him for it. Or kind of hyping this role up. And, you know, she wasn't sure like, hey, how do I get really good at this?

[00:34:34] And, and then there's also this aspect that I think a lot of folks face where the current job and the constraints of that job create a catch-22 where maybe your boss wants you to be a project manager, but they are trying to get a higher valuation for their business by having more product managers in there. And they're not necessarily wanting to kind of do the organizational changes to give those product managers the authority and the autonomy and the accountability. Right.

[00:35:04] And what ends up happening there is you're in this role where you don't have a chance to get the at-bats or the experience to grow. And without that experience, you can't necessarily switch over to another company where you do have the role set up for you to thrive at it. And so, you know, creating experiments outside of work is something that I've tried to mentor a lot of folks with.

[00:35:31] And in her case, I remember saying, hey, what's a concert that you like, that you think your friends will like, that, you know, that you might need to convince them just a little bit. And can you put on a party, like throw tickets for a pre-concert at your house or somewhere else, including the tickets, and get 10 people? And it involves some of the stuff that you enjoy doing, like the experience and the details.

[00:36:00] But it's also going to require some level of vulnerability to understand, like, hey, what show is this that the people that within arms reach that I have, like, you know, a manual or human distribution channel around? Can I convince people to do? How much of this, how much can I charge for this to make this worthwhile?

[00:36:21] And in this case, worthwhile was like just painful enough that, expensive enough that people would only do it if it felt really compelling. And there was a narrative you created and an experience that you could articulate. And I asked her to kind of do that. And she came back and said, hey, you know what? I understand the role now. And I kind of like the project management role I'm in because there's way less ambiguity.

[00:36:48] And there's way less vulnerability required, way less of a chance of rejection. And, you know, like you said, if you're a growth PM and you have an okay day, even if the product isn't growing, that's good for you that you're not bringing your work home maybe.

[00:37:08] But at the same time, there might be another role that you're better suited for and another person that's better suited for the growth PM that sort of obsesses a little bit more on the product actually growing, right? Like I've done loads of training, like for minor products in the past. And I'm always a little bit sad when I see and have people on the training course who are like three, four, five, six years into their career.

[00:37:37] And they're still like really focused on the process part of product management. And they really care about like prioritization frameworks, like agile, like styles of user discovery and things like that. And I'm like, if you're still there, like that's concerning. And I'm always like, and I was thinking about what you were just saying there when it comes to like hiring and stuff like that.

[00:38:02] Like there's a number of like green flags and red flags that I look for when I'm looking at someone's LinkedIn profile or their CV or something like that. And one of them is if they have been like a product manager for like 10 years and they haven't progressed to like senior product manager or head of product or something like that.

[00:38:25] Because I'm like, if you, if you aren't driven enough to like want to be promoted, you're not going to do well. Certainly in the types of teams that I've like worked in where it is like very driven, very ambitious. And so that's kind of like a bit of a orange red flag for me. But equally, like some of the green flags I look for, like a weird ones, like I look for people who've like played sport at a very high level or music at a very high level.

[00:38:54] Because again, it shows you like a level of determination and driven. And I would, I would value that experience more over just like general product management experience a lot when hiring, certainly for someone who's, you know, like on the slightly more junior side. I used to be at Pivotal Labs who very much kind of subscribed to extreme programming as the flavor of agile.

[00:39:18] And when a client came around and wanted to really debate Scrum versus XP or whatever, we kind of knew off the bat that this person was more looking to kind of fight maybe a religious war on the surface versus drive a transformation. And it doesn't matter what it's called. It's looking at each of the tenants and the investments required and whether you're going to get that return that comes.

[00:39:42] Of course, in the case of extreme programming, there's a number of tenants and you get like a much big bang if you can do kind of more or less all of them versus sure some of them on their own have benefit too. And those were certainly the ones that were kind of the engagements that were the least fun. And looking back, like I feel like they got the least value out of us.

[00:40:04] Maybe they got promoted because they hired the right firm and, you know, we went and did a lot of extra work on their behalf regardless of their distraction. Compared to other clients who didn't almost care. They just needed to hear a little bit of story about like, okay, what is it that makes you all different? And they're almost kind of bored hearing about the nitty gritty of extreme programming. But they're hearing that, hey, you're going to get to market faster. You're going to be really nimble in case I make the wrong decision.

[00:40:32] You're going to challenge me on an ongoing basis. And I get visibility on an ongoing basis of what's actually happening. Okay, that's what I'm going to hold you accountable for. How you get it done, you know, we could talk over beers, but it doesn't help me with my day job and selling more or growing this thing or growing this team or whatever. Speaking of leaders, I think when you're, you know, maybe we go back to that same example of a CEO founder and they've been very obsessed with the product. Right.

[00:41:01] And I think similar to the Ben Horowitz book, some of the real iconic founders and their obsession with the product is also, in my opinion, misconstrued. One of them is like, I haven't fact checked this story, but I heard that either the iPod or the iPhone, one of the devices that Steve Jobs wanted to have smaller. And the engineer showed him a prototype that said that they couldn't make it any smaller.

[00:41:28] Apparently he put it in an aquarium and showed the bubbles coming out. And this is a story that gets a lot of legs, right? Because he's saying like, hey, where's the room for that air if you can't make it any smaller? Like, and certainly I, and I don't know this other part, but I would wager that whatever Mac product that was coming out at the same time that he was changing the world with the iPod, he probably didn't put that in the aquarium as well.

[00:41:54] He kind of let those teams kind of, uh, make the next iBook or iMac or whatever. Um, so that he could obsess over this new thing that he was bringing to market. That was his skill, which I think is the founder skill. A lot of the time and knowing when to sort of hand the reins over, um, to someone else to figure out the full picture of the product and almost kind of, I hate to use this term mini CEO, but someone who's accountable for all aspects of it,

[00:42:22] including the business and continuing to maintain the metrics. Yeah.

[00:42:56] And then he went to the web, uh, to go, which is in Germany and their web RTC company. So communications tool. And interestingly enough, had three co-founders, um, all at the start co-CEOs. And then eventually one of them became like the product, um, co-founder who was my boss and, um, both me and the other product manager who were working there.

[00:43:19] Like we, we struggled a lot with getting him to let's say, give us the autonomy. And he was the guy who originally built like the product and he's very, very smart guy. And I kind of thought to myself, maybe in this role, I'll be a slightly different, I'll play a different role, like a facilitator role.

[00:43:43] Whereas in previous kind of roles and my kind of normal, um, modus operandi is like being the driver and having autonomy and everything else. The problem was that he also found it quite difficult to make like strategic decisions. So I ended up doing a lot of coaching with him. And one of the things I kind of said was like, look, this is your company. Like, what do you personally want to do? Do you personally want to be doing day-to-day product work? Which is fine. It's your company.

[00:44:08] Um, but what you can't do is like be doing day-to-day product work, but also like telling us like that you're delegating everything to us because like, because you're not. So that was a really kind of tricky one. Um, I would say I never really solved that. And that was because, you know, I think he'd kind of read a lot of the old product management literature, which says like, you know, high, smart people get out of their way, et cetera.

[00:44:31] And he wanted to be this kind of like mature, um, enlightened product organization. But that's just not what he wanted personally. Like he was very much in the, in the details guy and it didn't work out ultimately. Then on the flip side, like the last full-time role I had, I was one step removed from the CEO anyway. Um, so it was like me, chief growth officer, chief CEO.

[00:44:56] And I barely spoke to him because like he, he did not care about the product as it were. He just cared about like how much money did we make last quarter? How much money are we going to make this year? And you could start telling him about like experiments that we're running and he just, you just see him just kind of go like, yeah. Okay. That's interesting. But, um, yeah. Like which one's one, like how much more money did we make and stuff like that?

[00:45:24] Um, so I much prefer that because, you know, I enjoy autonomy and everything else in terms of how to, um, bridge that. Like if you're a founder, again, I think it's just about self-awareness. Like, and if you are a founder and it's, you know, a less than massive company, you can make that decision. Like if you enjoy product work, like hire people who aren't going to expect loads of autonomy. Yeah.

[00:45:50] I think there's some element of like the growth of the company is very much constrained by the growth of the founder. And as you're growing, you get a kind of flip to the next thing that the company needs, even if it's like sitting down and figuring out the next place you want to go. Uh, if you're getting close to where you thought you were going to go, uh, it's not easy. Uh, it's easier said than done, I should say.

[00:46:12] And I think another story that I'd heard is around Netflix and, um, Reed Hastings, the CEO, really was able to delegate a bunch of stuff to the person who ended up becoming, I think he's like Todd Yellen is the name, who ended up becoming the chief product officer.

[00:46:29] And in the early days, um, this guy was the person that figured out, um, the nitty gritty around that even in the DVD days of Netflix recommending titles based on behavioral analysis as opposed to like genres, which is how like blockbuster was set up. Right. Right.

[00:46:50] And, um, as this, the chief product officer was able to take on more and more, um, Netflix also transformed dramatically as a company. Right. So as a business, we hear often about the shift from DVD to streaming. Um, but there's a ton of other stuff that the CEO, uh, I think got to work on if they didn't, if they weren't mired in the product details, like going international.

[00:47:19] Uh, going into things like house of cards and, you know, all the other shows that they own themselves. Um, the Netflix culture deck is, is something that I think a lot of startup founders start with in terms of understanding what they want their own culture to be. And then eventually kind of, you know, of course the fundraising and all the other pieces that are, are important to doing that. Um, and then with autonomy that, you know, Netflix invented so many things, I think, um, on the engineering side, sure, but also on the product side, like things like.

[00:47:48] Like all the, all the binge friendly things like autoplay, uh, skip intro and stuff that, um, you know, we take for granted watching Netflix today. Um, didn't really exist before. And, you know, I, I'd like to place a couple of cents or a couple of chips on the roulette square saying that's because that there was a good separation of duties that CEO could go do.

[00:48:11] Um, really transformed the things for the business, knowing that, um, there was a product person that could trust and the product person had a lot of room, uh, and autonomy to experiment and get to a lot of the innovations that they've brought to the industry in general. Yeah.

[00:48:26] Yeah. Well, as you say, it's trust, right? Cause I think that's, I think that that is a limiting factor for so many CEOs and founders that they don't trust people enough because it's like, it's their baby. Um, and they don't think that anyone else will care about their baby as much, which is probably true. Um, but if you are looking for growth, you've got to get past that somehow.

[00:48:52] Hey, as someone who has gone through that journey, I'll say that, uh, in order to trust people better, I had to learn how to trust myself better. And the more I could trust myself and my ability to articulate my thoughts, hold people accountable, find the right people, uh, the easier it became to trust the people that I was delegating to. So, um, that might be on the other list of things for CEOs and founders wanting to get the most out of that growth product higher.

[00:49:22] Um, really appreciate you making the time. Uh, there's a couple of questions that I like to ask all our guests here. Um, since we are here in the business of helping people with fostering more engaged teams that build more delightful products. Those are both things that I'm very curious from my guests around what's a team that you find really inspiring or aspirational.

[00:49:46] I've probably got two favorite teams and they're both kind of examples actually of that I've given, I've spoken about already. So the first one was, uh, the big retailer, uh, which is surprising considering like how I talked about them earlier, but the team that were working on the product were amazing. Like we had the UX designer, UI designer, and then like six engineers.

[00:50:10] And I've never worked apart from the other company on a team that shipped so fast. Like they were able to like do a round of user research, come up with new ideas and, uh, ship them like within days. And my previous, my experience previous to that was like weeks, not days, sometimes maybe months.

[00:50:36] And interestingly enough, they were all contractors, like, um, extremely highly paid London based contractors. Um, couple were from an agency, but like the rest of them were contractors, but they were like at the very top end. And I think that is probably one of the reasons why they were so good. And a good example from that is, um, we were building as part of this product, we're building like, uh, uh, kind of mini app, like an internal based app.

[00:51:02] I dropped some wireframes, uh, gave it to the engineer. I was like, look, this doesn't need to be pretty. Just like use basic HTML, like, and build this and talk to him through like essentially what, what the purpose of it was. And I was expecting like, okay, I'll, I'll speak to him in like a week for an update. And like a day and a half later, he's like, I've done it. Um, it's finished, but I also did it differently to how you asked for it. And here's why. And he showed it to me and it was better than what I'd done.

[00:51:30] So I was just like, well, amazing. Like love that. Um, and that happened the same, like that German company as well. Like the, the technical teams and the design teams there again, just absolutely phenomenal in how fast they were. And like in a lot of companies that I've worked in engineering has been like the bottleneck. Like you always have more things to do.

[00:51:56] Like there's always like a growing backlog and working in those companies, um, engineering was like not the bottleneck. Like you do things and sorry, they would do things. And I have like, I have nothing else for you to do right now. So like, that's okay. And they'll just like be cleaning up code. And I was so unused to that the first couple of times I experienced it because I was kind of taught very early on in my career. It's like, it's your job to keep the devs busy.

[00:52:24] Uh, those are two amazing examples. And I mean, it's amazing when you have a solid engineering team around how you go from thinking a week or two out to, you know, months out or quarters out in terms of not having to fix engineering or fix delivery and not having that be an uncertainty or variable, um, gives you so much more clarity of mind to, to go for it and think more about where the product's going next.

[00:52:49] A similar question that we have is for a product that recently sort of really delighted you, or I'll take a service too. If it's just something that, you know, blew your socks off where you're like, yeah, the folks behind us really get it. And I'm curious, is there anything recently that you experienced that way? So I can't say I've used this in depth yet, but I've started kind of playing around with it. It's like all the products from, uh, 11 labs, which is a voice AI company.

[00:53:17] And, and I do intend to do a lot more work with regards to like marketing and outreach and things like that with it. But the first time I used it, it was like clone your voice. So I did a few kind of, um, learning, uh, recordings for it to like hear my voice, then like type something in and it would play back to me in my own voice. That's the thing that I just typed in. Um, and it's, it was really clear.

[00:53:45] It added in, you know, ums and ahs and things like that. And I was just blown away by like the, and also like the, the interface itself is like super intuitive, but like the, just like the perfection of the product and how advanced and innovative that was.

[00:54:02] I was just like, wow, like I, I, this is one of the, one of the things, those times where I was like, I should have gotten into AI four years ago rather than like really more deeply into AI in the last like year, because I should have been at the forefront of this a lot more. That's many of us, I would say. And if you had to guess at 11 labs, what's a, what do you think something that, you know, someone who's in the growth PM role or, or taking on that accountability, what do you think they're doing really well?

[00:54:32] Well, I saw a talk with the, I think it was the head of growth at the Mind the Product Conference a few months ago, which is, I thought probably the best talk there. And I think it really comes down to something quite simple. And I was again, thinking about this earlier on today, which is, I don't think that there are many absolutes in product management around like processes to use prioritization frameworks, like agile style, things like that.

[00:55:02] But the one kind of, I would say almost absolute truth is the build, measure, learn cycle. And one of the things he talked about was they can ship really quickly because they have fantastic engineers. They can learn really quickly. And as a result, they will orient to the right audience with the right product faster than anyone else. And I think they're like now one of the fastest growing companies in history.

[00:55:31] And when I heard that, I was like, yeah, it's down to that. Like the faster you can ship, the better you can learn and the quicker you will grow. And it came down to this, it's just that simple. Awesome. And kind of scary and, or maybe exciting. I don't know if we need myself here compared to my 11 labs clone. Yeah, I mean, they're doing that with video as well. Yeah, I believe it. For folks who want to get a hold of you and have a deeper conversation or maybe work with you, what is the best way?

[00:56:01] Send me a LinkedIn message. I check it every day. Cool. And that is J-A-Y-S-O-N Robinson. And we'll make sure to have a link in the show notes to all of that too. Well, thank you so much for making time for us and talking to us about growth PMing and sharing all the super insightful stories from your experience. It was super fun to have you on, man. Thank you. It's been great.

[00:56:59] Hope you enjoyed that talk with Jason. I don't care if the trains run on time if nothing's actually changing. I'd rather have the trains leave late if they're going to go really fast and make progress. Now, this is a common pattern that I see in my team at Integral Seas, especially in teams that come out of large organizations. Delivery velocity becomes the metric even when outcomes are flat.

[00:57:24] Now, this realization might have been one of the key reasons why I pursued a role in product myself, actually. Back when I was writing code as a software engineer, I had the benefit of working at a startup that provided manufacturing excellent software. And that led myself to reading the book, The Goal, about theory of constraints. It's a book that most of us were reading at this company, ShopLogix.

[00:57:46] Around the same time, the engineering team that I was on was very proud of a technical solution that we had come up with. And we were also absolutely heartbroken when this beautiful thing that we built did not matter to our customers. Now, this was a super intense feeling, and it led me to think about more deeper about what assumptions we allowed into the roadmap and how our customers could be so indifferent to something that our team loved so much.

[00:58:16] In addition to that book, The Goal, another book that I think helps articulate this dissonance is The HP Way that was written by the founders of Hewlett Packard. One of the clearest early examples is HP's inkjet division in 1990s for their printers. They were shipping regularly, meeting deadlines, but failing to grow market share.

[00:58:39] It wasn't until they shifted focus to understanding customer pain and targeting small office use cases that they unlocked real revenue and business growth. The lesson here is that building fast is meaningless unless you're building the right thing, and to focus on building the right thing first, and then building efficiently second. The second takeaway for me from this episode is Jason's delineation and that clarification he did between product managers and growth product managers.

[00:59:09] We talked about how growth PMs start with the business outcome and reverse engineer that into their product roadmaps. It's quite different of a mindset than I think what a lot of generalist product roles play out, especially the folks who focus on process versus outcome.

[00:59:27] And I think it's a good reminder for all PMs out there that there's likely a business outcome that you should be working back from that led to your team being created and your position being created and you're being hired. It's wild that I'm saying this out loud still in this day and age, but if you find yourself there, do your best to find out what those business outcomes are.

[00:59:48] And if they're not clearly stated by one person, you may need to ask a couple of stakeholders and then have to be the one to align everyone to one mission and one metric for your product team. One that can ideally be tied back to your company strategy and also be measured. And the measurement can even be qualitative at first if quantifying an art star metric is going to take a couple of iterations, but it gives you a good place to get started.

[01:00:12] An example that I think has been spoken about a fair bit recently is at Duolingo and how they actually built a dedicated growth team pretty early on, separated from their growth product or from their core product recently. And this team focused on retention, monetization, virality and acquisition. And the growth PMs weren't just running A-B tests. They were framing bets. They were shaping experiments.

[01:00:38] And they were working across the org with marketing, design and engineering to find ways to get compounding gains in their products. Their onboarding funnel optimization, for example, alone led to a double digit difference on day one. I'll make sure to have a link to the show notes from Lenny's podcast, a fellow product podcaster, where he has the chief product officer from Duolingo that talks about this a little bit more.

[01:01:07] The third takeaway was around founders and the founder bottleneck. And when the founders get too far in the details, when they need to take a step up to focus on strategy and allow their product hires to focus on the details. I love Jason's story about the founder who couldn't let go. And it's something I've seen firsthand. Someone says that they want autonomy in product, but in practice, they're still the bottleneck.

[01:01:33] And in fairness, having gotten to know some of these founders and executives pretty well, it's not always ego. It can often be a lack of trust or clarity, whether within themselves, their team or their vision. And while we touched on this, where I talked about that Netflix example, where I love so much, where Reed Hastings was able to step up and let Todd Yellen and team run with the product roadmap.

[01:01:57] Thereby freeing Reed Hastings up to drive strategy, culture, international expansion and original content. And of course, in Netflix's case, we know what happened next. Another great example is a company that we love to profile in Shopify. Their founder, Toby Lutke, stayed close to the developer experience, but he handed the product leadership over to Craig Miller during their hyper growth phase.

[01:02:25] Their head of product was trusted with major strategic bets, things like Shopify Plus, as well as their retail point of sale systems. And that trust and ability to step up was, I can imagine, really key to scaling. Mind you, this is someone as their CEO and founder, Toby, who still likes to say super hands-on. We've seen in his AI memo how he's hands-on with using AI himself.

[01:02:52] And there's also a rumor going around that he has an online sock store on Shopify that he runs kind of as a side quest. And he gets to use all the latest and greatest features of Shopify as a customer that way. Another point from the episode that I want to make sure that I highlight as a takeaway is where Jason talks about the evolution of the PM role. This one's already happening.

[01:03:16] AI tools, better collaboration workflows, and an executive workforce that's just way more technically savvy are all chipping away at the need of this translator PM. So as a PM, if your role is to sit in the middle of meetings, keep notes, write stories, you're probably not going to be adding a ton of value looking forward.

[01:03:40] I think there's more and more companies that are expecting PMs to be autonomous, extremely outcome-oriented, and drive alignment between design and engineering while driving product and business growth and outcomes. Similar to that earlier point about growth PMs, I highly recommend you figure out what that number is that you're associated with as a role, and then optimize all your activity for that number.

[01:04:10] The chances are it's likely tied to either growing revenue, reducing cost, or reducing risk in your business. And if you can't tie back your number to one of those three, it might be a good time to figure out which of those three you're working towards. The last one that I want as a takeaway is maybe a super spicy take, that you can't coach someone into being high agency. And in fairness, except for a few edge cases, I tend to agree with him.

[01:04:38] It's not about seniority or experience. It is about brain wiring, and you can either step up and chase outcomes, or you're someone who tends to wait for instructions. So as a leader, the question you might be asking is, how do you hire for high agency? And a couple of things come to mind here. One thing that I developed a lot of trust in is a workshop-style interview, where we'd give our interview candidates a relatively ambiguous prompt on a whiteboard, and we'd have them just kind of get started.

[01:05:06] And looking back, some of the best hires that we made for ourselves at Integral, as well as hires that we made on behalf of our clients, were ones who could bring clarity to that ambiguity by working back from the known knowns. And then moving forward to develop an approach to that solution, that they prioritize the actions based on the goals, as well as the risks and assumptions that they're able to uncover.

[01:05:33] And this is in contrast to the folks who needed a lot of prompting, got stuck early, and didn't seem to be learning and adjusting over the course of the interview as we provided them with more information. Another thing, like Jason mentioned, is looking at folks' experience and what they do outside of work. He mentioned that he values people who competed seriously in sports or performed music at a high level or built something solo, even if it failed.

[01:06:00] And that means that there tends to be a bias towards action and persistence, and I'd have to agree with him on that one. That's it for this episode, folks. A huge thanks again to Jason for bringing his clarity and candor to us and not dodging the hard truths about where we both tend to agree the product management role is going. If you are rethinking the structure of your product organization or trying to figure out how to hire for impact and not just for delivery, I hope this gave you something to work with.

[01:06:27] If this prompts a new set of questions for you or if you could use some help getting unblocked, reach out to us via social media DMs or on our website, convergence.fm, and we'd be happy to put some thought into helping you get unstuck. In some cases, we even end up with a one-on-one call. Subscribe if you haven't already, and if this was helpful and enjoyable, hit us with a five-star review or a share.

[01:06:54] It helps a lot with other folks like you to find us and our content. We'll catch you next week where we'll have another episode about fostering engaged teams who shipped delightful products. Thanks again for listening. Thank you for joining me on the Convergence podcast today.

[01:07:19] Subscribe to the Convergence podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your content. If you're listening and found this helpful, please give us a five-star review. And if you're watching on YouTube, hit that like button and tell me what you think about what you heard today.