Building the right thing is top-of-mind for most product people. This obsession is unhealthy.
When we ask ourselves, “What is the right thing to build?”, we have already assumed that “some thing” merits building. By this point, we have lost the chance to find out whether that “some thing” is worth building.
So we have these two questions we need to tackle separately:
(1) Whether-to-Build
(2) What-to-Build
What-to-build is a solutioning exercise. It is about creativity and innovation. Humans are naturally good at figuring out new ideas and solutions. Our primal survival instinct, that relies on the automatic processing center of the brain, is great at pattern matching and jumping to solutions. It even enjoys the feeling.
Whether-to-Build question, in contrast, requires residing in the problem space, as long as possible. It is a matter of self-regulation and waiting for the insight. This requires leadership, even if it is just self-leadership. Deciding whether to build requires activating the conscious processing part of the brain. This is much more effort-intensive because it consumes a lot more energy. Us humans tend to avoid this mode and hence we want to step out and into the automatic processing mode as soon as we can.
Whether-to-Build is an exercise in choosing, evaluating options and prioritizing. It takes incredible self-awareness and discipline to perform this exercise and not get swayed by the solutioning activities our brain rewards much more. It does not help that in the current high-hustle, high-output cultur, supported by the habits we have developed during the capital abundant, ZIRP era, it has become a disincentive to pause and reflect upon whether…to…build.
What-to-Build exercise blurs the boundaries between Product, Design and Engineering. It gives the human in the Product Manager a dopamine hit, the reward for figuring out a solution and putting it out there in the world. PMs operating in the What-to-Build mode find this a chance to satisfy their vanity and egos by having “told” Design and Engg what feature to build.
While the real job of the PM, the harder one, the one that requires choice-making, living with constraints, considering competition, deep insight into customer behaviour and outcomes, this job, is much harder and requires deeper thinking and well-honed emotional regulation.
So, becoming a great Product Manager isn’t just about learning critical skills in problem definition but also the personal attributes that enable one to stay in the problem space as long as it requires. In fact, the skills and the personal attributes reinforce each other when present and when not, lead to misdirection in human effort and spirit.
Below Water Level 