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Marty Cagan

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2024-03-10

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2024-03-10

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1. “But product teams don't do product strategy. Product leaders do product strategy. They need to do the product strategy. So you need, and look, I'm not the biggest fan of Meta, but Zuck is very good at product. Very good. That's sort of the problem in the world. He's so good at it. But that is the job is to make these strategic decisions, the focus decisions, the bets you're going to place. But then in a good organization, you give those bets to the teams. And you really do give them latitude to figure it out. And honestly, it's been a while since I worked with Facebook at the time, but they had very good teams, very good product teams, serious cross-functional, serious engineers, serious product managers and designers. And they could solve their”

   2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Yeah, so first of all, I would argue what he described is exactly what I see in good product companies. Exactly. But we don't frame it as top down. Top down is really means something very different. In fact, handing a team a roadmap of features, that's very top-down. You know, another very common misunderstanding which comes again, a lot of the agile coaches they have misguided so many organs.”

   2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “The other thing I'd argue, Lenny, is An empowered product team can do everything a feature team can do and more. So I find it very sad whenever, and I once in a while I do hear somebody say, why isn't it good enough to be a feature team? I mean, how do you answer that really? To me, like, why are you in this business? Do you really not care what your customers think about your products? Seriously? I know I would never hire you if I had any say, but... Because that's one of the first things we want, right? We want people to genuinely care about our customers and about our business and making lives better for them. So I don't have a lot of sympathy for those people. I mean, I do know that there's plenty of resources for them. So they're fine. It's the people that really want to do better than that”

   2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “I mean, there's a bigger reason I think so many sales companies, sales driven companies exist is that most of the time in those companies, the CEOs are not product people. And that's why they run that way. And until and unless the CEO decides this is not very good, usually because some good product company comes along and takes away their customers. That's probably not going to change.”

   2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Well, my first answer is this is not an accident why most B2B software is such crap. It is horrible. And of course, the ones that really stand out, they usually are not this way. So sales-driven product, I don't know if I, I mean, don't get me wrong, there's companies like Oracle that are massively valuable, driven with sales-driven product. You know, Oracle, do you really want to be Oracle? Do you want to be SAP? That's, I mean, does anybody like those products out there? I don't know. I'm not sure I've ever met anybody that didn't hate those products. So, no, I'd say that's just bad product. Now, I would argue that some of my favorite examples, in fact, in the new book, we highlighted a classic sales-driven financial services company moving to the product model and how it dramatically improved things for the sales organization.”

   2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Why not? Why don't companies in Arkansas and India and everywhere else have the access to the same methods and tools and techniques? And so that sort of became the inspiration for Silicon Valley Product Group was to spread those things. But I've had that exact conversation. I remember, as you're saying it, the first time Sriash Doshi told me the same thing. He was asking me, because he had known me and I'm like, I know you write about this stuff, but I really can't believe people are doing this. And I'm like, Sri Ash, I wish it wasn't true. But, you know, he doesn't doubt it today”

   2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “I've experienced that because I spent most of my career in that same bubble. And I was so surprised to find that people didn't work the way we did. I remember when it was too because I was a developer at the time for developer tools. And I was building tools, assuming that people were building like we built. And then I was sent out. I remember because one of the most eye-opening visits was my very first visit to Walmart's headquarters. They were doing things so differently. They had just very different way of working, very different equipment, just everything. And it was a wake-up call. It was like, you know what, I'm living in a bubble. Silicon Valley is not like most of the world here. And of course, I realized that.”

   2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “You know, it's very much this exists in the whole world, right? Buyer, beware. You have to use your judgment. You have to think. Probably the most important skill for product people, and I know this sounds awful, but is really learning how to think critically. And that involves literally evaluating. I know I talk to people all the time when I help them for their interviewing. I say, look, the most important thing you need to do some research on the manager that will be your direct manager. Do some background research. Go look at where they worked. It's all on LinkedIn. Check out those companies. Check out that product. Make sure you are prepared there because that's what really matters, not so much the company, but who's going to coach you. So there's a lot that people can do to sort of prepare themselves.”

   2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “And looking at that, and the person is, oh, thank you very much. Now I know what to do, and I'm going, oh no, there goes another one. You know, that is just, it becomes self-propagating. And like, what are you going to do? Is somebody going to try to police these bored thousands and thousands of them? You know, like a Lenny endorsed person or a Marty endorsed person. I don't want to do that. You probably don't want to do that. A recipe for disaster. You know, so this, there are so many reasons it propagates most to the books I see. I'm asked to review a lot of the books. I love it when it's an exception. And it's like, wow, that's a good book. Teresa Torres' book, Continuous Discovery Habits. Good book. Try to get everybody to read that. But that's the exception. And most of the time, people are earnestly describing what they learn.”

   2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “In fact, one of the most frustrating things for me is community. One of the things that's great about community, you have one of the biggest communities today. I mean, but there's a lot of these communities out there in the product world, product sub-communities. And the one I love about them is you pretty much everybody you meet genuinely wants to help. You know, really everybody. The problem is somebody posts a question, happens many times every day, and the majority of the well-meaning people jump in with what they learn at their crappy company.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “And really use their judgment, try to figure out what do you want to be if you want to be in the product world? What do you want to be? What kind of a product manager do you want to be? And if you want to stay fine, but if you want to do this, then there are good resources for sure. There are good resources out there. And of course, I'm hoping more and more people do that.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Or worst. And so unless they get really lucky where they happen to be really lucky and have a manager that is like guiding them in a good direction, it just propagates. And you see this all over. Articles, books, conference speakers. And a lot of times I can't even bear to watch. And it's not like there aren't great people out there who can speak. It's just that proportionally they're in the minority. So it's not as easy as it should be. Like you're saying, why can't people just go and learn? They can if they're lucky enough to kind of know where to go. Obviously, I'm biased. You're biased too. We're biased on this. But that's, you know, kind of people need to take more control of their career.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “This is 100% project manager. 100%. They didn't even pretend to put a little of the product, which most people, of course, are more creative than that. They bend over a little bit to make it look like a product manager, but not even close. And what I realized is what's so frustrating here is you have all these people that realize things aren't good. Yet most places they turn are just propagating that same model. So these certifications, which in my opinion are bogus, but Most people don't know. And just imagine you're a brand new product manager. You look online, probably what? 90% of the content out there is from the feature team world.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Well, this is maybe the most frustrating thing to me of all. And in fact, I should have answered when you asked me what motivated me to get spicy, what pushed me over the edge. Maybe I was in a bad mood that day. I don't know, but was this article that made the rounds online by probably the biggest certification institution for product managers. And they had this big article saying, this is what a product manager does. And it was a big graphic. And I'm looking at it and I was thinking, I cannot believe they said this out loud.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “They can literally do a self-assessment and raise the skills from a product owner or a feature team product manager to a real product manager. At a minimum, I tell people, and I've seen this countless times, at a minimum, your company will appreciate it and probably promote you because you will be one of the few that actually understands these things. Hopefully even more than that, they'll say, hey, why don't we try running a set of teams this way and see how we do? So it can happen from the ground up too.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “And a lot of product managers, they reach out and they're like, I know I'm in a feature team and I don't like it. I often use the phrase they're trapped in a feature team. And they're like, this isn't what I signed up for. This is not what I, you know, the New York Times article about product management wasn't this, right? This was different. And they're like, what should I do? Should I just leave my company and go to one of these other companies? I try to explain that they actually have a lot more agency than they realize. There is a lot an individual contributor. Of course, there's way more that a product leader could do. And that's kind of the biggest shame in all this is they're not doing this. Most product leaders are not doing this because they, of course, have a lot of agency, a lot of ability to change a company. But an individual can do it as well. They can raise their game. They can move.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Pessimistic version of the world. The real this is all you either I might be overreacting might be I'm not really known for being alarmist but maybe it's possible I hope so but I doubt it I think these trends are real now does that mean people are it's hopeless they should all start you know retraining to be I don't know what housing construction something the Gen AI won't replace maybe No, I think what really this does is you need to raise your skills enough with the silly facades.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Are deaf to this. They don't care. And I have theories about why, but that's kind of depressing. But, you know, for whatever reason, I feel like now I'm raising the volume because people are now seeing this the hard way. Because a lot of companies are cutting and these are easily among the most vulnerable people in a company.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Second on the other side of the spectrum is what we're talking about an empowered product manager. And then a feature team product manager is somewhere in between there. They do more than administer the backlog. They do a lot of project management. And don't get me wrong, project management is important, but it is not product management. And furthermore, in almost every company I see with feature team product managers, they have a boatload of project managers anyway. So you could hear like there's some exasperation in my voice because I feel like this has been quite clear for a long time. But most companies”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “So, this is when I described these things to a typical product owner, they're like, I'm not even, we're on different planets. What they learned in a CSBO or a PSPO class was how to manage a backlog in JIRA, which to me is very analogous to learning how to operate Google Docs. Of course, that's not the job. That's something we do every day, but it's not the job, just any more than, yeah, developers are in Jira every day. Does that mean that's their job? Of course not. Their job is to build. So yeah, this is what a product manager contributes. And really, the distinction, if you want to draw, think about it on a spectrum, a product owner is at one extreme. And honestly, that is a role in a delivery process. That has no business being a dedicated person really doesn't. And most teams I know, the senior engineer could do it better anyway.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Compliance issues, the sales issues, the marketing issues, the financial cost issues, the monetization issues, go to market in general. This is all legal constraints. This is all the product manager. Just think if you don't have this person on the team and you want to empower this team to make decisions, what are you going to do? You're just going to make it up or what they usually do is they call meetings with 20 stakeholders all in a room to try to decide these things. And now you've reverted to design by committee. So, no, the product manager needs to bring this knowledge. They also need to bring deep understanding of the market.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “A product manager is a creator. And so there's this side by side creation with design and engineering to come up with these solutions. Now, in order to do your job and represent value and viability, there are some real skills that are involved. First of all, you have to really become an expert on your users and customers. I know that I was not allowed to take product manager role until I had visited 30 customers in person, 15 in the US, 15 in Europe. That was just the person who was coaching me. That was their rule. And all I know is those 30 customers changed my life because I thought I knew our customers and I really didn't. Another is, you know, you're supposed to be the expert on the data. How is our product being used? How is that usage changing over time? How is it being purchased? So that's big. Another big one is you are the person on the team that represents the.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Value and viability is what you're responsible for as a product manager, just like an engineer's responsible for feasibility. It has to be a solution that can be built and delivered. But a product manager is responsible for value and viability. Another way I like to frame this is on a real empowered product team. Product manager is a creator, not a facilitator. I always cringe when somebody tells me, oh, my job is to say why. And I'm like, well, what do you do for the rest of the week besides the 10 minutes it takes you to say why, you know? It's like ridiculous. People think that. But you know what? On a feature team, when you're scrounging around for some justification of your job, it's not that big a surprise. But no, the why actually comes from the product strategy anyway. You don't even do the why”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Yeah, I mean, the biggest example of that is that they are, you know, they carry this title, product manager, because the whole world largely thanks to you, knows it's cool. But they're not doing any other role. And they don't have any other skills. Now, of course, what really bothers me is it's not that hard if they are motivated. It's not that hard for them to develop the skills. And that's what I talk to people about. You can raise your game so that you actually can contribute at this level. That's what you should do for your own career. But by the way, and not accidentally, that's what your company needs you to do.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “That's where the product manager role came from. That's what they still at a good product company are responsible for. So that's a very different job. It's also, if you have a person playing that kind of product manager, it is very unlikely they've got time on their hands to get in the face of the designer and start wireframing for them or start irritating the developers. They got their own work to do.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “And that's harder. And that's what a product team really does. It's only when you sign up for an outcome that you have the needs for a product manager in the sense, I would say, in the Silicon Valley sense. If you've been asked to solve these problems, that means you have to come up with a solution that's not only usable and feasible, which is what a feature team does, but is also valuable and viable. And that means you need a different set of skills that your engineers and your designers almost never have. That's not a knock on them. Those are very different skill sets. So now you need this person who understands the customers and understands the business deeply.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Their customer problems or their business problems are both, but they're given a problem to solve usually one or two a quarter on top of, of course, to keep the lights on kind of work that everybody does. But they're given hard problems to solve. And the measure is not ship the damn thing. The measure is it solves the problem. And that's why really the biggest difference between a strong product company and the rest is strong product companies understand it's all about outcomes. You just don't get points for shipping. You get points for delivering the value. A lot of the CEOs and CFOs I talk to, they resonate best when I frame it as it's about time to money more than time to market. We know how to do time to market. If you insist on time to market, we know how to do that. The techniques are well known. The harder part is time to money. And I know that's what they care about.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Yeah, well, there's a lot of clues for sure. Some of the easiest is on a feature team. You're basically given a roadmap of output. I mean, that's the key is output. In other words, they're features or projects that usually it could have come from an executive, could have come from a big pocket customer, could have come from wherever. But it's a bunch of features. And you're being asked to design, literally you're being asked to design, build, test, deploy that feature. You're usually given dates and timeframes as well. But that's a feature team. You deliver, and don't get me wrong, that's still work, but that's output. It is a lot easier to deliver output than it is to deliver outcomes. And a product team, an empowered product team, instead of being given that roadmap of features, they're given problems to solve.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “That's a very different job. And I don't see that. In fact, I consider that complaint you're raising as the biggest clue that they are probably a feature team. Then I'll go ask them how they're working and what that person. And then, of course, the first thing I ask the product managers, how do you define your job And I bet you've heard a hundred variations of the sort of mealy mouse squishy eye kind of facilitate this and I do some communication and I heard the cats and I'm listening to that going, man, I would not want to try to defend that job to the CEO.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Don't because it's a project management role, Annie. And they already have plenty of people who can cover that. And furthermore, a lot of times the engineers or the designers say, you know, we'd rather do it ourselves than deal with this person that's got this complex and trying to be the boss of everybody and they really don't contribute anything. So that's what's really going on in my view. They are either a delivery team or a feature team, usually a feature team in this model. And I don't blame those people for not finding value in the product manager. They are just not bringing that value. They do bring a little value in fairness, but this is very brutal, but they're dramatically overpaid for the value they provide. Now, on the other hand, in a real product team,”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “Those examples with very few exceptions, and I hear it all the time, almost every day what you're describing, they're feature teams. And the truth is, and this I've been saying this for a long time, the truth is they don't need PMs in a feature team.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “So many companies to realize what is going on. And bottom line is today, I think they all, everybody, especially outside in this sort of those big process and role heavy companies, they need to take a hard look at how they build products and how they serve their customers. And they need to look harder at how the best companies do this with so much less proportional spend and so much more real return and really take a fresh look at how to best meet the needs of their customers. I mean, that's what transformation is about, is moving to work like that. And the ones that do that well, I think the ones with the best chance to survive.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “So, what's going on in so much of the world is they have so little in the way of outcomes to show for all this cost. And we talked about the sheer number of people becomes a problem and the amount of that cost can be shocking and the amount of waste is basically embarrassing. So it is not a surprise to me that companies are reacting to that. The bigger surprise, honestly, is it's taken so many so long.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Product people, it's just, I think it's gotten crazy. I've been, in fact, I wrote an article a long time ago, something like a decade ago that was very popular at the time called Epic Waste. And I was pointing this out and saying, this is crazy. The ironic thing is that the better companies do way more with a lot less. So anyway, the roles. And then what about all the years that have been going on where they think these big companies think the answer lies in processes, especially things like safe, which outside of the sort of Silicon Valley world is depressingly popular. And, you know, and even though Scrum, a lot of people don't even understand simple processes like Scrum and they miss the point.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Now we can talk about, don't get me wrong, we aren't, I don't think we're ever going to go back to the days of big companies having almost all co-located teams. But there is no question. I mean, I work with a lot of them. They are all struggling with innovation and velocity. Things go slower and they don't really do that level of innovation that they used to do. And so we These are big factors. These are sort of macro factors that are going on. And then on top of that, if you get outside of sort of the Silicon Valley bubble, it's kind of even worse because they have been investing at these companies, especially the big companies in all these extra roles. You know, I mentioned agile coaches, but like scrum masters and every flavor of project manager you could dream up they're everywhere and every kind of assistant”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “Reducing the size of the organization ironically can get you a lot more in terms of results. So there is this general appreciation that maybe we overdid it here with all of these roles. And of course, I'm talking about agile coaches and product owners and product ops and business analysts and all these assistant product manager types. So we'll go into that if you want. It's gotten out of hand at a lot of companies. And then the one that I really probably shouldn't bring up just because it's become a religious topic almost. Now, I know it's a super sensitive topic. Both velocity and innovation have taken a real hit.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Go into some companies and honestly, I can't believe all the ridiculous roles that they have. Now I'll go into that more if you want later. But no question that people realize that smaller teams can often produce more and better results. How many of your guests have said as much? I've heard it from many of them.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “First of all, I'm not even sure that's good advice, but the fact that the CEO of one of the most amazing companies in the world is saying don't learn programming, that's disruptive. And so at a minimum, it creates uncertainty among the leaders in the companies at a minimum. But honestly, I think there's very real impact. I'm convinced of that. I just don't know the real time horizon. I've got a long history of being overly optimistic. Like I think things are going to happen sooner than they really do. So I don't know when they'll really happen, but that's a big one. Here's another one that I think does not talk nearly enough about, and that is in a lot of companies, especially outside of Silicon Valley, team size has just gotten out of hand. It's just gotten...”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “There is no question that a lot of companies overhired during the pandemic. That was easy to see, even while it was going on. And, you know, it's not just that they overhired. A lot of them lowered the bar, but at the same time, of course, we have a change in the financial world that has really increased the cost of funds. And that's another thing going on simultaneously. And probably One of the biggest things of all, and this is the hardest because it's not happened yet, is the predicted impact of generative AI. I mean, this is, I don't know if you saw literally the CEO of NVIDIA the other day was saying to don't learn programming.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “I do. In fact, I've got some very uncomfortable things to talk about, which I know, you know, the more intelligent part of me is like, don't bring that up. But also the other side of me is like, but people need to hear it.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “Really interesting, totally fair. And also, I don't think you want to scare off your guests. This is really the platform they have to share what they think is important. I do always find it entertaining because a number of the companies you profile, I already know. And it's always fun to hear them describe it versus what I see if they're company. Because, of course, they're not always the same. But that's just human nature, right? We all do that. And so anyway, I hope you continue doing what you're doing, Lenny. And I want to, and I'll keep following.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “That's the goal for us. It's a different goal. You can see that. So, all these data points become interesting as data point, but we're looking for those things that kind of last. And you never know. I mean, you have to see for one, like, I love working with startups, but as you know, a lot of startups are dominated by the founder and the early people. And it almost doesn't matter what techniques they use. If they're good, it's amazing what they do. That's just amazing. And so that's probably important to get out of the way.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “I'm looking for what we're all about is sharing the principles and the practices that are used consistently by the best product companies. In fact, we have a heuristic. We've never made a secret of this. We are always asked about new techniques and new methods, new processes. And we're like, look. We need to see it being used by at least several of the companies that have proven they can consistently innovate. If those companies can use it productively, We're all about evangelizing that. It's worth pointing out that we don't, we make this clear in every one of the books. We don't invent any of these things. We just, if they work, we like to talk about them. So we're looking for the commonality, and mostly we're looking for, you know, to help a company, whether it's a startup or a large company, to have the best possible chance of success.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “And it made me want to watch a lot of these. Some of these companies I know, but other ones, you've introduced me to that I don't know anybody at. So to me, that's incredibly valuable. It's a whole lot easier than the way it used to be, which is a whole lot of traveling to a lot of companies. So I love that. You are helping so many people to get a broader understanding of product. My goal is different, this sort of SVPG. We are also trying to help the product community, but we're, you know, it's interesting what when I watch your interviews, you're trying to pry out of people what's special about what they do, which is what I want to hear. But interestingly, what I'm looking for is not what's different. It's what's the same.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “Ways of working, ways of doing products, experiments with the product model, experiments in leadership. I loved that. It actually helps me a lot. You had some, I mean, you have a lot of subscribers and people that I know would see something and they'd email me and they say, did you see when he was talking about with Linear or with whoever? And like, how do you explain that? What do you think is going on?”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “It's not small. It's not a small set. Maybe before I get into it, though, I realize that people should understand where I'm coming from and how it's different than where you're coming from. Because this perspective, just to be clear, I think both, we're both trying to help the product community, but we're trying to do it in very different ways. And I want to be clear, I love the way you do it. In fact, if people don't know, I'm a paid subscriber because I find it incredibly useful for what I want to do. So let's talk about that. I mean, my take, you obviously could describe what you do better than anyone, but my take is that you are, and this is what I find valuable, you're sharing a broad range, increasingly broad range of perspectives, people.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Know that there's a degree of that. I'm always looking at what are the things that could really shake things up in a good way, but also in a bad way. And there's been a number of things I've been very worried about for a long time. And I think that there's sort of a convergence of factors that are going on. And one of the challenges is it's simultaneous. So there are a number of things happening in parallel, which is kind of a recipe for some chaos and a lot of fear. And, you know, in the product community, in the design community, in the engineering community, it's there. You can see it. And I talk to people, I mean, like you, I talk to people pretty much every day. So I do have a lot of theories about why this is going on and what people can do to best protect themselves, their career, their companies. And so I'm happy to share that, but it is.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “It's conscious. I find myself, I'm aware of myself sort of dialing up the rhetoric around this stuff. You know, I've actually been saying these things for a long time, honestly. And I mean, it's on the record. You can read the blog articles from 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Things are changing. And first of all, I should acknowledge, I don't know if you're this way, Lenny, but most product people I know like me are paranoid. So we're kind of always worried that things are going to come and just take our customers away and change, disrupt our products.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Too many people in our industry view themselves as a victim of their company. Like they're stuck in a feature team and there's nothing they can do about it other than quit. I think that's not true. There is so much they can do.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “They're dramatically overpaid for the value they provide because it's a project management role. It is a lot easier to deliver output than it is to deliver outcomes.”

    2024-03-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source