In a lesson in attaching to larger waves, our most popular Mind The Beet post of all time is a tongue-and-cheek post on lessons for Product Managers inside Taylor Swift’s lyrics. In honor of her new album dropping this weekend, we decided this would be a good chance to refine and republish.
Without further ado, here are some tips on product that all you Swifties out there can relate to.
🎵It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me. 🎵
Enough said. If you are PM, Step 1: Show up. Step 2: Take accountability. Many times, being present & helpful is more useful than being absolutely right.
🎵If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Strategy sets the scene for the tale.🎵
Great PM’s know how to generate energy and drive consensus to quicken decision-making. A product strategy doesn’t answer every product question you’ll have, but it’ll provide the right bounding box for the sandbox you play in.
🎵I had a bad habit of missing lovers past. My brother used to call it “Eating out of the trash.”🎵
AI is creating new categories and disrupting norms. Don’t fall into the bad habit of loving old ideas or failing to question previous assumptions. Lean into the latest trends.
🎵 At least you know exactly who your friends are. They’re the ones with matching scars🎵
Great x-discipline partnerships stem from shared accountability. Ensure your designers and engineers feel responsible for the same outcomes as you do. Celebrate wins together and learn from failure jointly.
🎵I keep my side of the street clean.🎵
Set a quality bar for your own work higher than what’s expected of you. Sweat the details.
🎵 And it’s fine to fake it til you make it. Til you do. Til it’s true. 🎵
Everyone has Imposter Syndrome. Product making is part art, part science, part intuition. Developing that intuition takes time and practice.
🎵 I polish up real nice. 🎵
One of the most magical parts of product management is the art of great synthesis. PM’s transform raw and messy customer input, data and market trends into a coherent product idea that will drive impact.
🎵Get out your map, pick somewhere, and just run.🎵
In product making, if you are standing still, you are falling behind. Analysis paralysis is a real thing. You learn by doing & collecting data.
🎵She needed cold hard proof, so I gave her some. 🎵
Clearly, Taylor goes out of her way to have a great relationship with her Data Science team. Definitely a top tip for any new product manager.
🎵 He wanted it comfortable. I wanted that pain. He stayed the same. All of me changed. 🎵
You can’t develop product intuition without failure, pain, and trying new things. Find a team where it’s ok to fail and learn. View boredom and comfort as signs of needing change.
🎵 Bend when you can. Snap when you have to.🎵
Iterate or pivot? Change is costly, so as Taylor is saying here, always iterate and grind it out when you can, but don’t be afraid to pivot when the data is clear that what you are doing is not working.
🎵Familiarity breeds contempt. 🎵
If you work in software long enough, you know that user experiences age. People worship disruption and sometimes a “new way of doing the same thing” is a feature in itself. Startups by definition need to counterposition against incumbents, so there is a natural tendency to look down upon the current solutions.
🎵 Did you ever have someone kiss you in a crowded room, and every single one of your friends was making fun of you, but fifteen seconds later, they were clapping too? 🎵
Figuring out how to manage a non-consensus bet is an important part of product making. Persistent, differentiated product success often comes from seeing something other people didn’t and capturing it. It takes careful management of your stakeholders to survive through the crucible of judgment before the bet clearly plays off.
🎵 I gave my blood, sweat, and tears for this.🎵
You’ll work on many features that end up shipping, but there will be a time when you’ve poured everything in, but the feature needs to get cut. Sometimes not shipping is a feature and that’s ok. You earn your stripes as a PM upon your first failed experiment or cut feature.
🎵If it feels like a trap, you're already in one.🎵
Taylor, were you talking to Clay? If you work in Big Tech, you think about the Innovator’s Dilemma - your current customers will encourage you to iterate on what is perceived as the highest value, only to be disrupted by new entrants who focused on lower-value customers and then iterate to the next big thing. The tough part of this strategic quagmire is that incumbents don’t know they are in this situation until it’s too late.
🎵So what if I told you none of it was accidental. Cause I’m a mastermind.🎵
Yes, you are, Taylor, yes you are.