Ebi Atawodi, a product director at Google YouTube Studio, starts her Pendomonium+#mtpcon Amsterdam roadshow talk by observing that sometimes we take for granted what it is to imagine something in your head and then see it in the hands of people and how magical and humbling that is. She says that, at their core, product managers need to believe there is a mission worth fighting for, that there are people around them that can learn from, and they need to have agency.
She says that earlier in her career she started questioning what it means to build, and then thought it might be an opportunity to move into product management. She also wanted to move into big tech - and has done so, with jobs at Netflix, Uber and Google.
These are the characteristics she says you need to succeed in product:
She says: “It starts with you and how you want to show up and create curiosity and courage.”
She’s created a builder’s playbook for product managers from the lessons she learned at Uber. It has six tenets which she says allow you to create an environment in which you can build.
Ebi references the three-legged stool idea of product management, but says it’s more like a mandala. “I wouldn’t be the product manager I am today without the partners I’ve worked with,” she says.
Her advice is to have about 60-70% of your work overlapping with your partners, and she explains how this works at her company. She also explains how you can build an operating cadence, and what to do when this cadence doesn’t work.
Product managers should have a clear idea of where they’re going and what it looks like when they get there (zoom out), Ebi says, and also what it looks like to take the first step (zoom in).
You should be an owner not a renter, Ebi says, there’s no us and them. Otherwise you create a culture that says “it’s not me, it’s somebody else”.
If you had to choose between taking a multivitamin or paracetamol for the rest of your life, then you’d probably choose paracetamol, Ebi says. It’s like the difference between a problem backlog and a project backlog, she explains.
By starting with a product statement you force everyone to go through their own version of it and then can discuss your differences. Polarity mappins will also allow you to argue both sides of a problem.
Ebi says a friend once said to her: “Life is like the ocean, the waves don’t stop coming. I need to learn to surf.” She says that the best product teams are able to have resilience. “They don’t stand still and fight the change. The wind doesn’t break them… they’re able to bend and flex with the change.”
Read the full recap of our day in Amsterdam on the Pendomonium+#mtpcon roadshow
