Product Managers play a critical role in shaping, driving, and delivering products that meet customer needs and align with business objectives. In the product team PM is responsible for addressing value and business viability risks. It takes time to see the result of PMs work, which means that much of their work is behind the scenes, talking to customers, validating problems, strategizing, and making decisions based on a wide array of inputs. However, the intangible nature of these contributions can sometimes make it challenging to appreciate their full value. In response, some PMs engage in more visible work as a means to demonstrate their contributions. This visible work can include speaking at conferences, writing blog posts, hosting webinars, or crafting internal specifications.
The common problem is focusing too much on the visible part instead of doing some deep product work. The bigger problem is when PM's manager encourages this behavior, mistakenly thinking that producing such output is real work.
But don't get me wrong, visible work is not that bad. There are cases where it does a lot of good for the product, business and personal growth.
Increase Transparency. By sharing insights through webinars or internal presentations, PMs can increase transparency about the product development process, decisions, and strategies. This can foster a culture of openness and trust within teams and across the organization.
Personal growth. Engaging in activities like speaking at conferences or writing blog posts helps PMs to establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry. This can raise their profile both within and outside the organization, attracting talent, partnerships, and even customers.
Facilitates Knowledge Sharing: Activities like spec writing and hosting webinars can facilitate knowledge sharing, helping teams understand the product's vision, features, and the rationale behind certain decisions.
Clarity. Another great exercise, that falls under visible work, is written narratives or Amazon-like memos. Writing these documents not only improves the analytical and communication skills of a product manager, but also if done right brings complete clarity about the product direction and WHYs behind it.
Okay, but what are the cases where visible work can do harm?
Time consumption. Every hour spent on visible work takes an hour from deep focused work or customer conversations. Time effort is always heavily underestimated, turning minutes to hours or days. Take a moment and think how many hours have you spent on some blog post recently.
Quality and miscommunication. There is a delicate balance between producing visible work and maintaining the quality of that work. Quantity-over-quality approach. This also carries a risk of miscommunication or misinterpretation, which can affect the product's or organization's reputation (hello Value and Business Viability risks!).
While engaging in visible work can offer several benefits for Product Managers, including enhanced credibility, improved skills, and greater transparency, it is essential to balance these activities with the core responsibilities of the role. PMs should strive to ensure that their visible work aligns with their product and organizational goals and does not detract from their primary duties of creating the products that customers love.
Be visible, but remember that products prove their own worth.