Product Collective - 👷 Product manage your manager

Working with managers is about managing up

Whether you want to call it managing up, your relationship with your direct manager and other leaders in your organization has a direct influence on the success of your product, and your career. And if you want your bosses help with your career, one thing you need to do is make your boss’ life easier. Here’s a collection of resources on how to build a strong relationship with your manager and other leaders in your organization.

Managing up - yes, you have to do it. Managing up seems to have gotten a bad reputation as "something you have to do to get an arbitrary level promotion in a large company because your manager is probably incompetent." It's more of how to build a strong relationship and work well with your manager. For some people and their managers this comes naturally. For everyone else Ellen Chisa shares some quick things that usually apply, and some style dynamics that can have a big impact.

(via @ellenchisa)

Earn your manager's trust. Managing up is the art of creating a strong relationship with your manager. This is an underrated system for growth as a product manager. Investing in this relationship is an excellent use of time as it unlocks a career coach and mentor, connection to opportunities, a lifelong evangelist, and a more enjoyable work environment. The foundation of managing up is your regular one-on-one with your manager. Will Lawrence shared the template he uses for running these meetings with his manager.

(via @will_lawrenceTO)

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Stuff Ted Lasso says

Well, it’s official – Season 3 of Ted Lasso is officially coming to AppleTV later this Spring! We’re big fans of Ted Lasso here at Product Collective, so even without a firm release date, this news certainly made us feel all warm inside. If you’re never seen Ted Lasso – well, you have some binging to do this weekend. 

In the spirit of Ted Lasso, though – I’ve found a few quotes of his that I think are perfectly applicable to product people. So grab your cup of coffee (not tea – that’s just hot brown water)...

“Taking on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse, isn’t it? If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, you’re probably doing it wrong".

Product work isn’t often “comfortable”. And that’s okay. Sometimes, the best products are made when we push ourselves outside of our comfort zone. Otherwise… well… we’re probably doing it wrong.

“If you care about someone, and you got a little love in your heart, there ain’t nothing you can’t get through together.”

Replace the word “someone” with “customers” and re-read the quote. Imagine if we thought about our customers… with a little love in our hearts? Maybe it could show through in our products. 

"Believe."

I believe… in “believe.” If we don’t have belief in the products we’re building… then is it even worth building them?

Do you have a favorite Ted Lasso quote of your own? Can you think of others that relate to our work as product people? Email me and let me know!

Managing up when leadership is stuck in the weeds. Many of us have been in situations where we’re managing a product and your leaders get lost in unnecessary details. How do you manage up so your efforts don’t lose momentum? Using a real-life scenario of how a director at a tech company built a propensity model to streamline sales and presented it to his leaders and the salespeople using it, Ian Gross and Samir Ranavat present three strategies to get leaders out of the weeds: 1) Work with your “users,” 2) sell the big picture, and 3) create self-service content.

(via @HarvardBiz)

5 Managing up hot takes From top tech leaders. The folks at Reforge collected a set of managing up hot takes from their CTO, Matt Greenberg and shared that with a set of Reforge experts across marketing, product, and engineering. The experts indicated whether they agreed with the hot takes and provided some detail why. 

(via @reforge)

Everything you need to know about ‘managing up’ – and how to do it right. Managing down is all about being a good boss to your team. Managing up is all about being a good report to your boss. Both forms of influence matter for your success at work and career development, but managing up is less talked about. Anouare Abdou tries to rectify that situation, starting with one simple principle - managing up is about making your boss’ life easier.

(via @hive)