OK, so the Cranky Product Manager has been a big lazy pants lately. No posts for over 10 days and then relying on guest posts for the past few weeks. What can she say? She’s drowning under a pile of work, dealing with her frakin’ taxes (which were WICKED complicated this year), and adjusting to being a de facto single parent (very glad that Darling Husband has a new job, but its hours are long – the kid only sees him for only about 30 minutes total during the week).
Ok, so sorry. Really. Mea Culpa. OK, sue me, why don’t you?
Anyway, the CPM still doesn’t have time to write a riveting post. But she does want to tell a certain cranky guest poster where he can put his whiney rants.
To the Cranky Marketer (part 1 and part 2):
Oh, boo effing hoo. Poor you. Really, how OUTRAGEOUS for people at your company to expect you and your fellow MARKETERS to actually know something about MARKETS and customers.
Yes, blame your lack of basic knowledge of market segments and customers on the product managers — that’s the ticket! Blame everyone else at the company because you are consumed with tactical activities and don’t ever get to strategic activities. SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN AND A HALF.
Seriously, WTF? Part one is one of the whiniest posts ever. You’re in Marketing, genius. If there is one position that EVERYONE would agree should know something about the market, IT’S MARKETING. And if there is one role in the company that has latitude to think and act strategically, IT’S MARKETING.
You think Sales or Engineering do?
Do you think Product Management is any more isolated than Marketing from the crushing backlog of tactical activities?
No way, dude. The Cranky Product Manager’s to-do list typically has 100+ activities on it, 95% of which are tactical. And BOY, is it tempting to skip those 5% strategic activities that help the Cranky Product Manager learn about the customer, identify new market needs, and keep on top of new market trends and what competitors are doing. But somehow, like ALL decent product managers, the Cranky Product Manager manages to carve out the time for the strategic. Even though she really doesn’t have the time. Yes, it means tactical balls are dropping all over the place. And that she gets bitched at and whatever by Marketing Weenies who want to collect their salaries while having someone else (namely, the Cranky PM) do their work. But despite all that, the MOST IMPORTANT STUFF – the strategic stuff – gets done.
Marketing Weenie, maybe you could try a similar approach? CARVE OUT THE TIME for the strategic. Stop whining and just make it happen. Suck it up. Do you own job, and stop expecting the Cranky Product Manager to spoon feed you market knowledge. Go get some of your own. Stop blaming others. NO MORE EXCUSES. Be a BUCK-STOPPER, not a buck passer…. You get the point. (Well, maybe not – you do seem like the kind of Marketing guy who needs things phrased 40 different ways before you get it.)
Oh, and does telling you this make the Cranky Product Manager an “arrogant asshole who does nothing but look down on Marketing”??? Perhaps, although usually the Cranky Product Manager is called an inveterate bitch or a c-word, not an asshole. But anyway, IF YOU DID YOUR DAMN JOB SHE WOULDN’T LOOK DOWN ON YOU. In fact, she’d fall down on her knees and thank Sweet Cheezus Christ for sending her a Marketing Weenie who wasn’t preoccupied with colors, website fonts and product names (should this one be the “Express Edition” , the “Personal Edition” or the “Web 2.0 Clusterfuck Edition”???) and instead actually offered some STRATEGIC insight.
Oh and, for the record, the Cranky Product Manager thinks the Cranky Marketer is pretty atypical. She doesn’t know any other marketers who (overtly, anyway) blame their lack of market knowledge on product management. Even the weeniest and whiniest of Marketing Weenies typically see it as their own responsibility to actively acquire market knowledge and not just be passive recipients.
—–
OK, the Cranky Product Manager has to get back to work. She’ll take on the frakin’ Cranky Sales Engineer and Cranky Engineer later.
Also in The Cranky Marketer Goes Off
- Guest Post: The Cranky Marketer Goes Off (Part 1)
- Guest Post: The Cranky Marketer Goes Off – Part Deux
- The Cranky Product Manager bitchslaps the Cranky Marketer
- Guest Post: The Cranky Marketer Part 3 – The Problem with Product Management
{ 13 comments }
shoot me –one of my product versions is called express.
oh my. can’t breathe. laughing too hard.
Cranky did overlook one thing here. Marketing did screen the code words that dev used. But, that might have been accidental. Oh, they didn’t. Ouch!
Have to say I have only worked at companies where Product Management and Product Marketing have been a unified function. I think this is generally healthy and forces people in these functions to thoroughly understand the product, the market, the positioning and how to get the message out. With Product Management and Product Marketing divided, “Product” is still in both titles for a reason. While day-to-day tasks and emphasis differ, the Product Marketing Manager’s foundation for marketing must derive from deeply understanding the product and its value — the Product Manager can be a resource in making that happen, but the responsibility and initiative should come from the Product Marketing Manager.
Yeah, I would love to work in a company where Marketing and Product Management weren’t one and the same.
Like the CPM, I have a couple hundred items on my todo list, and I am forced to find time for the strategic goodies as well (my VP and EVP enforce that carve out of time).
Just the other day, I had to educate the VP of marketing on the true size, and regardless of how he “felt” that the market should be 3 – 4X larger (it ain’t, I have run it bottoms up/tops down MANY times) it is what it is. When I laid out the known knowns, the known unknowns, and as much as we can estimate of the unknown unknowns (to paraphrase a former Defense Sec), he had to admit that it was pretty damn accurate (if depressing).
I try very hard to ensure that I know my markets, I try even harder to know my customers (and their profiles), and I am blessed with the ability to absorb an amazing amount of abuse from CSE’s who really need to be slapped into line.
I get to do the Marketing thing too. How does the website look, how about data sheets? Does the promotion material work in Asia, Europe and America? Manage the forecasts. Project product P&L’s three to fives years.
I would love to have a partner in crime to do all that for me, but as I mentioned earlier, I have NEVER worked at a company where they weren’t embodied in one person.
Great post.
@Cranky_PM, I thought the Cranky marketer had some good points and much of it was around bitching at sales which I was in the mood for at the time. Also there were points made in the comments about how difficult a job it is as PM or PMM.
@Ken Pomper – up until recently I did both but you can’t do both very well its just too much work, in my experience. We are still stretched thin even though we’ve expanded our team since then.
@CPM – Hey – Congrats to your spouse for joining the ranks of the gainfully employed!
Regarding the rest of the post, maybe you should approach Hallmark about creating your own line of management-oriented greeting cards. I’m just sayin’ – you have a way with words when it comes to pointing out shortcomings in others :)
Just think – it’ll make performance reviews go so much faster if a manager can just give a direct report Hallmark cards that cover all the major points:
1) The “you whine too much” card.
2) The “you make your coworkers sad” card.
3) The “please attend to your personal hygiene” card.
4) The “you need to stop getting wasted at off-site events” card.
5) The “NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR @#%ING CAT!” card.
Just an idea.
(And I get %10 of the gross.)
@Paco – Awesome idea.
The Japanese have a saying…
“Fix the problem, not the blame”.
I have done all the jobs CM has done, from pro-serv to Product Management to Product Marketing. Between Product Management and Marketing, I will say the former is much more loaded with backbreaking day to day tasks than my current Product Marketing job, so I cannot empathize with CM (as CPM says, boo-f’ing-hoo).
As far as part deux, sure to qualify for upper management or Exec, you have to be subject to RNF’s (Random Neuron Firings) which are usual knee-jerk, dumb initiatives…. but I found that if you have any cohones (regardless of your actually gender), then you should be able to steer upper management in the right direction. They will respect you more for that in the long run.
I agree the CM’s situation is deplorable, but I prefer to think it does no represent everyone’s reality… I have no such major complaints.
Thanks for an awesome post, and Paco, you are on to something…the Hallmark cards idea is great. CPM, thank you for expressing openly what I so often hold in and the voices shout in my head during meetings, and such. I am a Christian so I do try to hold it in, and not fully display on my projector of a face, but in moments of absolute honesty, I scream (again, in my head) all that you wrote down in this post.
Oh, and when you put the cards for sale on the site, I will buy them along with another mug.
Happy Friday!
Taking all things into account (well, excluding their possible role as a stepping stone to somewhere else), are these good jobs (PM and PMM) for the people doing them, on a scale of 1-10 (no fair using negative numbers)? Interested in how it all weighs out, on balance, for other people doing them. The potential to use both the technical and business sides of the brain in some satisfying way is great, but potential and reality can be worlds apart.
Ken,
A lot has to do with what you *like* to do – which hopefully coincides with what you do best. I have technical degrees that qualified me for programmer / systems analyst type jobs and found I was a good analyst, mediocre programmer. Then I ran a team of Sales Engineers and became addicted to the “thrill” of trying to win deals and I greatly enjoyed customer interaction, so I was on a path further and further away from pure technology. Now the favorite part of my job is doing presentations and I work very hard at trying to get good at them (and doing presos people enjoy).
If you are technical but very outgoing, there seems to be a natural career path (albeit a sideways one) from Programmer Analyst to Sales Engineer / Solutions Architect to Product Manager and sometimes to Product Marketing (in some smaller companies PM and PMM are embodied in one person). If you take this path, you will find that your technical background gives you much more street cred and you are able to enjoy the best of both words (Technical and Customer / Marketing). Realize though that each move has a learning curve and you have to be dedicated to self-improvement and occasionally eating humble pie as you learn.
Put another way, when I was a programmer analyst, my job enjoyment rating was probably a 4. As an SE/SA, it was a 7 (travel was rough). As a PM, it was 7.5 (+1 for less travel, -0.5 for less “thrill”). As PMM, it’s a 9. I feel in my bones this is what I should be doing and hope this leads to a PM/PMM Director and VP role.
I know it’s scary walking away (it seems) from the comfort zone of a pure technologist, but if your personality is really cut out more for PM / PMM, your job satisfaction goes way up.
Sigh, and they wonder why we’ll never have peace in the Middle East! I loved the post, but it sorta masked the real problem. Yes, the world has its share of CPMs and CMS – the big question is how to bring them together, not push them apart.
Although a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolate might be one’s first thought, how about something with a little bit more staying power? Ultimately what’s missing from everyone’s 100+ item to-do lists (which will never get done, so why fool yourself and let it grow to 100) is the simple concept of shared goals.
If the CPM and the CM have the same set of goals that they’ll get measured against, then no matter how bad the relationship gets, they’ll always have that to fall back on. If management doesn’t step in and create the goals, then the CPM (yes, it’s your job to do the right thing) needs to sit down with the CM and create the shared goals.
Remember, if it was easy, then anyone could do the job.
- Dr. Jim Anderson
The Accidental PM Blog
“Home Of The Billion Dollar Product Manager”
Just stumbled on your website. Right down hilarious. Thank you for lifting up the spirit.
Gregory Haardt
The Clueless Product Manager
“A journey to product management wisdom”
Comments on this entry are closed.