The Rocky Product Manager
Please read before proceeding: This article has no purpose to minimise any difficulties any other role has, neither expose any kind of superhuman that a Product Manager must be nor say that PMs are better than anyone else. Since the Author, myself, has been a product manager pretty much his entire career he can’t speak about any other role besides the PM one, and today he is here to share his experience and insights throughout his professional development as a Product Manager. #pleasedontcancelme
The year was 2021, the first quarter I’d say, a vast conversation was happening in the company I was working for. At some point my friend came out with what he called “The Rocky PM”, rephrasing a quote from the movie “Rocky Balboa” from 2006 to fit the Product Manager routine.
The original quote is the one below spoken by Mr Sylvester Stallone as Rocky:
“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.
You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward.
That’s how winning is done.
Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!
I’m always gonna love you no matter what. No matter what happens. You’re my son and you’re my blood. You’re the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself you ain’t gonna have a life.”
The quote is quite profound and many of us can easily relate it to anything in life, any position, role, and seniority, and it will always suit any tough moment in life.
Since I’m a Product Manager, I could easily relate it to my role and my routine, even comparing it to many different stages of my career.
So let’s narrow down to the Product Manager role, let me show you how that fits:
The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it…
The product world is not full of sunshine and rainbows indeed.
For you that are just starting this career or have the intentions of migrating to it bear in mind that whatever you read, watched, any lecture or book from any famous name like Cagan, Torres, Perri, Gibson…
The real world outside is not the state of the art as they say. It can even stink sometimes. And if you let it beat you to your knees, you indeed will forget all you’ve learned in theory or life and will incorporate whatever this world is telling you as truth.
I’ve seen so many times Product Managers speaking about validating hypotheses, doing discovery, involving Stakeholders in the process, sharing vision and strategy, and communicating clearly with the team, but once they step into the role in a company to do what they said, it seems they blank out and start doing whatever the routine and environment forces them to do.
So be mindful, reality and life can indeed beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it!
You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.
If you change “Life” to “Users and Stakeholders”, it’s easy to relate.
Both of them will hit you hard many times, and they will punch your ideas and thoughts in the face as you’ve never seen before. But it’s all about how much you can handle that, how much you can rethink your ideas, pivot them, and come up with new things and new ideas. That is the real deal!
If you can do that, and you have resilience, let them punch you, it’ll feel more like an itch. And slowly you will find out what is the best path to follow with your product, find your market fit and so you won!
Remind yourself to always love the problem, not the solution. If you get stuck with the solution, the blow is harder, be sure!
Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!
Again, let’s slightly rephrase it, changing the “You’re” to “Your hypotheses” and then we have common sense on what is a discovery of any product.
Just believe in your hypotheses, whether gut feeling or data telling you, just go and test it, validate it. But be sure that you may be wrong most of the time, and the only way to know that is by testing it, validating it, experimenting, doing research, and coming up with the truth!
If you don’t do that, there is no reason to blame anyone besides yourself. And if you are blaming, that’s just you being a coward! Just stop with that!
And please don’t be ridiculous saying that others don’t allow you to do this or that, you know that this is just because you don’t have the resilience to convince, or negotiate, with whoever you need to proceed with your test, experiment… let’s be honest with ourselves.
…until you start believing in yourself you ain’t gonna have a life.”
Change the word life to product, and that simplifies everything.
It is what it is. Either you believe in yourself, believe you are up to the challenge, you can fight that fight, you can be beaten, be hit hard and keep up and running, and be the real Product Manager that your team is expecting, or just stop pretending. That is the only way to have a successful and sustainable product up and running.
Let’s rephrase the whole sentence to fit a PM role.
“Let me tell you something you already know. The product world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.
You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as users and stakeholders. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get research, do experiments and keep validating your hypotheses. How fast you can fail, learn and keep moving forward.That’s how you get your users by heart!
Now if you know what your hypotheses are worth then go out and get data and convince whoever you need to do what you believe. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying your product ain’t where you wanna it to be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!
… Until you start believing in yourself, your team, your hypotheses, and validate them ya ain’t gonna have a product.“
Just get up, stand up, dirt off your shoulders, lead by example, stoic, courageous, temperance, wisdom, and justice. The obstacle is always the way, choose not to be harmed and you won’t feel harmed.
Always remember: “Success is usually the culmination of controlling failure, every champion was once a contender who refused to give up, if this is something you wanna do, and if this is something you gotta do, then you do it. Fighters fight.”
